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Subjects and Subject Pronouns in Spanish
The subject of a sentence is (a) the person or thing the sentence is about or (b) the person or
thing doing the action in the sentence:
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Juanita is tall and athletic.
The students do their homework every day.
Subjects can be singular—referring to one person or thing—or plural—referring to a group.
Because Spanish is a gendered language, subjects are also masculine—referring to males or
masculine nouns—or feminine—referring to females or feminine nouns. (See the “Gender of
Nouns” document for more information on that subject.)
Pronouns can replace nouns to prevent repetition:
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Juanita is tall and athletic. She plays basketball.
The students do their homework every day. They earn strong grades.
Subject pronouns fall into six categories. The English subject pronouns are:
first person singular: I
second person sing.: you
third person sing.: he, she, it
first person plural: we
second person pl.: you (all)
third person pl.: they
The Spanish subject pronouns are similar but have some key differences that will be discussed
below. They are:
1st person sing.: yo
2nd person sing.: tú
3rd person sing.: él, ella, usted
1st person pl.: nosotros, nosotras
2nd person pl.: vosotros, vosotras
3rd person pl.: ellos, ellas, ustedes
There is a detailed explanation of the different forms of "you" in the file “Register – tú and
usted” for expressing "you".
Note that because Spanish is gendered, there are not only separate pronouns for "he" and
"she", but also for the plurals "we", "you all" and "they" - use nosotras, vosotras,
and ellas when the group being referred to is 100% girls or women.
Subject pronouns generally start a sentence in Spanish. If they are placed after the verb or at
the end of a sentence, it usually indicates a question instead of a statement.
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Tú eres serio.
¿Eres tú serio?
¿Eres serio tú?
Because Spanish verb forms are much more specific than English verbs, it is normal to drop the
subject pronoun from a sentence entirely if it is clear who is being talked about.
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Soy mexicana.
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Luis y Margarita son argentinos. Son de Buenos Aires.
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Estudiamos español.
Note that there is no word in Spanish for it. If the word needs to be expressed at all in Spanish,
you will use either él or ella, according to whether the noun is masculine or feminine.
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¿Dónde está mi libro? (Él) está en la mesa.
¿La computadora? (Ella) no funciona.