Causatives: deixar, mandar, fazer + infinitive

What it is

A causative is a verb that gets someone else to act: you let them, you have them do it, or something makes them do it. Portuguese uses three verbs, each followed by a plain infinitive:

• deixar + infinitive = let, allow: Minha mãe não me deixa sair à noite.
• mandar + infinitive = have something done, or tell someone to do it: Mandei consertar o carro. A professora mandou a gente esperar.
• fazer + infinitive = make, cause: Esse filme me fez chorar.

The second verb never changes: no participle (not mandei consertado), no conjugated form (not me deixou saio), and no a in between (not mandei a consertar).

How to form it

Who does the second action?

When you say who acts, that person goes between the two verbs. In speech, an object pronoun goes before the causative verb (me deixa, me fez, te mandei). In formal writing a sentence-initial imperative takes the pronoun after it, with a hyphen (Deixe-me).

A few things to notice:

• Deixa eu ver uses the subject form eu, because eu is the one who will ver. It is everyday Brazilian Portuguese in all spoken situations, but formal writing prefers Deixe-me ver. What is never right is mim: mim only comes after a preposition (para mim, sem mim).
• After não, nunca, já and similar words, the pronoun comes first in every register: Ela não me deixou entrar.
• With a noun in the middle, the infinitive may take personal endings (pt-g-060) or stay plain, and both are correct: O professor deixou os alunos saírem / sair mais cedo. After a pronoun like -os it stays plain: Deixou-os sair.

mandar que, fazer com que + subjunctive

Careful Portuguese can also put the second action in a que-clause with the subjunctive. A past trigger takes the imperfect subjunctive (pt-g-057):

• O médico mandou que eu ficasse em repouso. In speech: O médico me mandou ficar em repouso.
• A chuva fez com que o jogo fosse adiado. This one is common in the news.

Try a few:

When to use it

deixar is about permission: Os donos não deixam a gente ter cachorro. In the imperative it is the handy way to offer or announce something: Deixa eu te ajudar. Deixa eu pensar. Deixa eu te contar uma coisa. Two related lines you will hear every day: Deixa que eu pago (let me get this) and Deixa comigo! (leave it to me).

mandar has two jobs. Without a person, it means having a job done for you, usually a service you pay for: Vou mandar consertar o chuveiro. Mandei fazer uma chave nova. With a person, it is an order: O chefe mandou a gente refazer o relatório. It also passes on messages: A Luana mandou dizer que vai chegar atrasada (Luana sent word she’ll be late).

fazer is about causes, very often feelings and reactions: Vocês me fazem rir. O frio fez a gente voltar mais cedo da praia.

Contrasts and traps

• deixar vs deixar de. Deixei ele sair = I let him go out; Deixei de sair = I stopped going out (pt-g-074). One small de changes everything.
• mandar vs pedir. Mandar is an order. A request is pedir para: Ela pediu pra gente esperar (she asked us to wait).
• No participle. English I had the car fixed has a participle; Portuguese doesn’t: Mandei consertar o carro.
• Sometimes no causative at all. For personal services Brazilians usually say the plain verb: Cortei o cabelo (I had my hair cut), Fiz as unhas (I got my nails done).
• Deixa-me ver in a chat. It is grammatical, but in Brazilian speech it sounds stiff or European. Say Deixa eu ver or Me deixa ver, and keep Deixe-me for formal writing.
• Deixa ele falar is fine in speech; in formal writing, Deixe-o falar.

If you speak Spanish

The three verbs line up with dejar, mandar and hacer, so the structure is familiar. Watch three details: déjame ver becomes Deixa eu ver or Me deixa ver in speech, not Deixa-me ver; Latin American mandé a arreglar drops the a: mandei consertar; and hizo que + subjunctive is usually fez com que in Portuguese, with the imperfect subjunctive in -sse (fez com que eu mudasse), never the Spanish -ra form.