You put your pronouns in, you take your pronouns out, you put your pronouns in and you shake
them all about.
Hola, yo soy Jordan and this is a Spanish Quickie--fast, easy Spanish lessons from somebody
who speaks your language.
I recently spent six minutes and three seconds telling you all about Subject Pronouns in
Spanish and how to use them (I incorrectly called them Personal Pronouns--oops!).
But now, I’m going to tell you, DON’T use them!
Huh?
Let me explain.
To understand what I’m about to say, you really need to be familiar with the material
in The Infinitive & Conjugation, Personal Pronouns and The Three Enemigos.
So if anything doesn’t make sense to you today, go back and watch those lessons.
Here are the subject pronouns in Spanish on a typical conjugation chart.
(formerly known as Personal Pronouns).
And here’s the present tense conjugation of “ser”.
We learned, to say “I am” you would say “Yo soy”.
“You are” is “tu eres”.
“We are” is “nosotros somos” and so on.
Take a look at those conjugations of “ser”.
They’re all unique.
No two of them are the same.
That’s different from English.
In English the same chart looks like this.
Notice “are” takes up four of the six spots.
So right away, we know Spanish is very different from English in this way.
This difference gives us one huge power in Spanish.
We usually don’t have to say the subject pronoun.
Because each conjugation is unique, if that word is said, we know exactly which box it
comes from and thus, what subject pronoun is implied!
For example.
“We are” is “nosotros somos”.
But do you see “somos” in any other box?
No, you don’t.
So if you see or hear “somos” EVER, ANYWHERE, you KNOW 100% that it comes from this box.
And this box always is first person, plural.
“Somos” is exactly the same as “Nosotros somos”.
You don’t have to say “nosotros” for them to know exactly who you’re talking
about.
This is in direct contrast to English.
If you saw or heard just “are” in English, you’d still have no idea what’s going
on.
That could be “you are”, “we are”, “you both are” or “they are”.
See why this doesn’t work in English but it does work in Spanish?
Just by looking at the conjugated form of the word you can usually tell who or what
the subject is.
Let’s go to another, very familiar example.
You’ve heard this a dozen times now, “Hola, yo soy Jordan”.
That means “Hello, I am Jordan.”
But look at that word “soy”.
That can only mean one thing and can only come from one box on this chart and thus is
first person, singular.
Since “soy” can’t mean anything other than “I am”, I can just say “Soy Jordan”
instead of “Yo soy Jordan”.
So just from the conjugation, if you don’t use the subject pronoun, the person you’re
talking to, will usually know exactly who or what you’re talking about.
Notice I said “usually”?
We can do this in Spanish because the subject’s identity is not ambiguous.
But, the third person in Spanish does have a little ambiguity.
The first person is always “I” or “we”.
The second person is always “you” or “you both”.
But the third person can be “he”, “she” or “it”.
So if the subject isn’t clear, you should still use the subject pronoun for the third
person.
Don’t worry about that too much--these cases are quite rare.
If you think about it, we only use subject pronouns in the first place--in English and
Spanish--when the subject is clear.
You wouldn’t say “he is so nice” unless the person you’re talking to knows exactly
who you’re talking about.
So the situations where subject pronouns are needed in the third person are rare.
You’re much more likely to have to add the proper noun to avoid confusion.
For example, “Bill is so nice.”
Bill being the proper noun.
That’s what they’re called, right?
Another time when you pretty much need to say the subject pronoun is situations where
you would say in English “it’s me” or “it’s him”.
This works a little differently in Spanish.
“It’s me” in Spanish is “soy yo”.
Which translates literally to “I am I”.
“It’s you?” would be “Eres tu?”
“You are you?”
That was kinda weird for me at first, it probably will be for you too.
But if you think about it, our way is kinda weirder.
I mean “it’s me”?
So we speak in the third person about the first person?
At least in Spanish they use the first person to speak about the first person.
After you hear or say this a few times, you’ll get used to it real fast.
Okay, this is a really simple lesson, so I’ll just tell you three important notes then we’ll
get out of here.
No homework today.
But if you stay till the end of this video, I have something new for you I’m trying
out.
If you like it, let me know in the comments below and I’ll do it more often.
Important note number one.
You can still use the subject pronouns whenever you want.
If I want to say “Yo soy Jordan” I can do that.
It just sounds kind of stupid.
Just being honest here.
It’s just very redundant.
At first, it’s totally cool.
Please don’t beat yourself up if you use subject pronouns right out of the gate, but
do work toward not using them.
It’s very common for we Gringos, myself included still, to overuse subject pronouns--because...
well, it’s crazy that you don’t have to!
I’m going to pretty much stop using them in the lessons from here on out, I was just
waiting to introduce you to the idea.
Important note number two.
I said “I’m pretty much going to stop using them”.
Sometimes adding the subject pronoun when you don’t need to, is done to add emphasis.
For example, if you’re with a group of friends and you’re talking about going on a trip
to Spain.
Friend #1 says “Voy”.
“I go”.
Friend #2 says “Voy también”.
“I go too.”
But you have plans or don’t want to go, you can say “Yo no voy”.
“I don’t go.”
By adding the “yo” you’re saying “I don’t go” instead of “I don’t go”.
You don’t go, in contrast, with emphasis, to them both who are going.
Got it?
Important note number three.
“Usted” and “ustedes” both add ambiguity into the situation, but I’ve avoided that
subject in this video because I didn’t want to muddy the waters.
Today’s video is about the idea of not using subject pronouns.
In the video Formal Conjugation, I go over how “usted” and “ustedes” are different.
And ambiguity is the bottom line here.
Generally speaking, the ultimate rule that covers 100% of the situations is: When there
is no ambiguity as to who the subject is, you don’t need to say to subject pronouns.
If there’s any ambiguity, you do.
But don’t sweat this too much.
On one side you might overuse subject pronouns.
Who cares?
On the other side, they might have to say “Who?”
As in...
“Who cares?”
If you’re not already subscribed to the Gringo Espanol newsletter, why don’t you
head on over to GringoEspanol.com/free-updates and do that now (the link is also below this
video).
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everybody gets.
That’s gringoespanol.com/free-updates.
I will see you next time.
Hasta luego.
Adiós amigo!