Spanish pronouns

Spanish pronouns in some ways work quite differently from their English counterparts. The system is more complicated, but richer. Subject pronouns are often omitted, and object pronouns can appear either as proclitics that come before the verb or enclitics attached to the end of it in different linguistic environments. There is also regional variation in the use of pronouns, particularly the use of the second-person singular informal vos and the second-person plural informal vosotros.

The table below shows a cumulative list of personal pronouns from Peninsular, Latin American and Ladino Spanish. Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews, is different from Latin American and Peninsular Spanish in that it retains rather archaic forms and usage of personal pronouns.

¹Only in countries with voseo
²Only in Spain

Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns. Information contained in verb endings renders the explicit use of subject pronouns often unnecessary and even erroneous, although they may still be used for clarity or emphasis:

English subject pronouns are generally not translated into Spanish when neither clarity nor emphasis is an issue. "I think" is generally translated as just Pienso unless the speaker is contrasting his or her views with those of someone else or placing emphasis on the fact that his views are his own and not those of somebody else.

The masculine and feminine third-person pronouns (él, ella, ellos, and ellas) can refer to grammatically masculine and feminine objects, respectively, as well as people, although their explicit use as impersonal subjects is somewhat uncommon. The neuter third-person singular pronoun ello (as well as its plural ellos) is likewise rarely used as an explicit subject in everyday Spanish, although such usage is found in formal and literary language. Quite unusually among European languages, the first- and second-person plural subject pronouns (nosotros/nosotras and vosotros/vosotras, respectively) are also inflected for gender: nosotros and vosotros are used to refer to groups of men (as well as men and women), and nosotras and vosotras are used exclusively to refer to groups of women.

Like French and other languages with the T-V distinction, modern Spanish has a distinction in its second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. The most basic is the difference between tú (vos in voseo areas) and usted: tú or vos is the "familiar" form, and usted, derived from the third-person form "your grace" (vuestra merced), is the "polite" form. The appropriate usage of these forms is fundamental to interpersonal communication. Using the usted form when addressing someone implies that the person addressed is a social superior, someone to whom respect is owed, or someone with whom one does not have a close relationship; in conservative families a child will use usted when addressing a parent. In contrast, the use of tú or vos implies that the person addressed is an equal, a comrade, a friend, someone with whom one has a close relationship, or a child or other social inferior, including (traditionally) a maid or other household employee. One can give offense by addressing someone with tú instead of usted, similar to inappropriately calling someone by his/her first name in English. Spanish has a verb, tutear, meaning to use the familiar form tú to address a person. Commonly, if a speaker feels that the relationship with the conversant has evolved - sometimes only after a few minutes of conversation - to a point where a shift from "usted" to "tú" is desirable, he or she will confirm this by asking if it is acceptable: Nos tuteamos, ¿verdad? or ¿Te puedo tutear? is fairly common. In Anglophone countries this would be parallel to asking if it is acceptable to call someone by their first name.

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