Language Bites, Volume I: Spanish ✔

Subject Pronouns and Present Indicative

Subject Pronouns

A subject is a noun that is doing the verb. The subject is the first underlined noun in the sentence, and the object (noun having the verb done to them) is the second underlined noun. The mechanics of object pronouns are different from English, and so we'll save them for another time when we've gotten used to the pronunciation and syntax of Spanish. For now, though, let's look at subject pronouns:

Yo - I 

Tú - you 

Él - he

Ella - she 

Usted (ud.) - you (use this pronoun when referring to elders or people in a formal setting)

Nosotros - we

Vosotros - you all (only Spain uses this pronoun, so it is not essential to learn how to conjugate it)

Ellos/ellas - they (the former is masculine and the latter is feminine)

Ustedes (abbreviated as uds.) - you all

Often Usted/Ustedes will be abbreviated in a sentence.

To-Be: Present Indicative

Ever hear of the subject-verb agreement rule in English? You know that grammatical rule that says that your verbs must have certain endings depending on their subjects? This is called conjugation when referring to other languages like Spanish, except for that Spanish is much more regular than English. 

The standard, unadulterated version of a verb is called the infinitive. In English, all infinitives start with "to": for example, to eat, to walk, to sleep, etc. In Spanish, all verbs in the infinitive form either end in -ar, -er, or -ir. The mother of all these infinitives is the verb known as "ser", which means "to be" in English. There's another kind of "to be" verb that will be covered later, but for now, "ser" is the one that we will focus on. 

Present indicative is often called present tense by teachers, but the concept is the same. In English, our present indicative goes something like this:

I am Joye Everett. ("Am" is the present tense of "to be")

In Spanish, however, there are more conjugations to be learned than simply "am", "is", and "are", but they are easy to master. Below is a table I wrote for the different conjugations of ser. It should be noted that there is no subject pronoun for "it" in Spanish:

Examples: 

Yo soy una cristiana. (I am a female Christian)

Tú eres un chico. (You are a male teenager)

Él es un americano. (He is an American)

Es un gato. (It is a cat)

Nosotros somos buenos. (We are good)

Vosotros soís pavos. (You all are turkeys - Spain only)

Ellos son mejores. (They are best)

Ustedes son gentes. (You all are people)

But that's not the only thing to learn in present tense indicative. What should we do about other verbs? The endings for Spanish present indicative are placed at the end of the verb, in lieu of the -ar, -er, or -ir suffixes. For the examples, I'll use the verbs "hablar" (to speak), "beber" (to drink), and "escribir" (to write). If only one ending and one example is given, the ending applies to all the types of verb. If only two are given, the second ending goes for both -er and -ir verbs:

Some other notes on this topic:

●It should be noted that most people do not use the subject pronouns in conversation. For example, you could say Yo escribo or Escribo; neither is incorrect. However, it is recommended that the pronouns for él, ella, and usted be used as it gets confusing when it is factored in.

●When saying "I [verb] with [someone else], the subject pronoun is used. For example, "I walk with him" becomes "Yo camino con él."