Spanish personal pronouns

• Basic pronouns
• Usted / ustedes

Basic pronouns

First-person singular: yo (I)

Second-person singular: tú (you, singular)

Third-person singular: él / ella (he / she)

First-person plural: nosotros / nosotras (we)

Second-person plural: vosotros / vosotras (you, plural)

Third-person plural: ellos / ellas (they)

The neuter pronoun it is not usually expressed in Spanish. We use él/ella instead, or we just omit the pronoun and use the verb only.

Traditionally, the plural persons are used in this way: if the group of people consists of women only, we use the feminine version. If it consists of men only or both men and women, we use the masculine version (even if there are 50 women and one man!). To be inclusive, we can use some gender-neutral formulas: Nosotros y nosotras, nosotros/as or nosotr@s are common ones.

Usted / ustedes

We have a second-person formal pronoun that we use to express courtesy or respect. It has a second-person meaning, but it is conjugated in third person, since it comes from the old courtesy formula vuestra merced (your mercy). (We say your mercy/your majesty/your honor is — as opposed to you are. We'll do the same thing in Spanish when we learn the verbs.)