Personal Pronoun Introduction
Here are some questions people ask about personal pronouns. What are personal pronouns? Are personal pronouns handled in Spanish the same way they're treated in English? Do I need to know the Spanish parts of speech in order to learn it well? Can you give a simplified version of what are personal pronouns?
As you know, pronouns fill in for nouns in the structure of the phrase. Furthermore, personal pronouns are words that substitute for people-nouns (nouns/words that happen to be a person).
Sometimes sentences have pronouns when the subject noun is not specifically known or available as in the sentence it's snowing.
Personal pronouns do the same as a noun and they get treated like nouns in the sentence structure.
Examples of Personal Pronouns With English Translation:
In the tables that follow you'll see examples of personal pronouns in some different forms they take on and with some sample sentences to illustrate and make it easier to understand. English translation sentences are used often because it's usually easier to figure out by simply relating it to what we already know from English grammar.
| Spanish | English |
| yo | I |
| tú | you |
| ella | she |
| el | he |
So, here are some examples to illustrate the personal pronouns in the table above. I eat the apple is equal to yo como la manzana. Notice that the English sentence begins with I and the Spanish sentence begins with the personal pronoun yo.
The personal pronoun I in English is always written as a capital, uppercase letter while the corresponding Spanish pronoun yo is always written in lower case. Here is the same table above in the plural form -- use these personal pronouns to talk about more the one.
| nosotros | we |
| Ustedes | you (plural) |
| ellas | they - feminine |
| ellos | they - masculine |
Ustedes while used in singular to show respect is also used in a familiar sense when directed at a group of two or more people listening.
Finally, here is a table of personal pronouns which are being used as direct objects in the sentence. You'll recognize the English equivalent by looking at the example sentences that follow.
| me | we |
| te | you |
| la | her |
| lo | him |
me busca -- he is looking for me.
te hablo -- I talk (or am talking) to you.
la habla -- He talks to her.
You'll notice that in the example sentence the word order and sentence structure is completely the reverse of in English. See how in the first phrase the word me at the beginning corresponds to the words for me at the end of the English.
Similarly, the word te at the start of phrase-two is the same as the words to you at the end of the English phrase 2.
And finally, the word la that begins phrase three is represents to her located at the end of the third sentence.