trabalhais

Trabalhais is the second-person plural present indicative form of the Portuguese verb trabalhar, meaning to work, when used with the pronoun vós. It is a standard form in European Portuguese, where vós remains a recognized, though increasingly formal, subject pronoun. In Brazilian Portuguese, the vós form is rarely used in everyday speech; the corresponding form for you all is vocês trabalham.

In terms of usage, trabalhai is a traditional or literary register in many contexts. Vós is most commonly encountered in formal writing, classic literature, religious texts, or regional varieties, and may sound archaic to speakers who use modern spoken Portuguese. For most modern dialogue, Brazilian speakers use vocês with a plural third-person verb form (eles/elas trabalham), while many European speakers use vocês or vocês trabalham in informal speech and reserve vós for formal or literary style.

Grammatically, trabalhar is a regular -ar verb, and trabalhhais follows the regular present-tense paradigm for vós in European Portuguese: the verb stem is trabal- with the characteristic -hais ending. The form translates to “you all work” or “you all are working” in English.

Etymology (brief): the verb trabalhar derives from Latin and Romance-language roots related to labor and toil, with the modern form developing through the history of Portuguese from older forms influenced by Latin and other Romance languages.

See also: trabalhar, trabalho, vós, Portuguese verb conjugations, European Portuguese.

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