What are they? Pronouns are words that replace or refer to nouns.
There are different types of pronouns in Spanish. We are going to look at personal, possessive, reflexive, and prepositional pronouns in this section.
Pronombres personales
Personal pronouns replace the name of the person or persons being referred to ie. the words for I, you, he or she, we, you (all), they.
Note that ‘usted’ is the formal word for ‘you’ and ‘tú’ is the informal word for ‘you’.
Nosotros is used to refer to ‘we’ or ‘us’, when those involved are male, or a mixed group (male and female). Nosotras would be used for a female group. The same applies to vosotros/vosotras and ellos/ellas.
Pronombres posesivos
Possessive pronouns indicate ‘to who’ a noun belongs to.
Posesivos átonos are placed in front of nouns. For example, my house = mi casa.
Posesivos tónicos are placed behind nouns or stand alone. For example, the house is mine = la casa es mía.
Both types of possessives must match the noun being referred to in both gender and number. Therefore, if we are talking about ‘casa’, the word ‘mi’ will remain singular and cannot change gender, whereas ‘mío’ will be used in the singular and feminine form ‘mía’.
If we wanted to say ‘our houses’, this would be ‘nuestras casas’.
Pronombres reflexivos
A reflexive action is one that a person does to him or herself. Some verbs are always reflexive such as peinarse, levantarse, ducharse, sentarse, etc. These tend to be verbs involved in daily routines but there are others such as ‘to sit’ or ‘to laugh’. Other actions can be reflexive if applicable such as ‘ponerse’ if you are putting something on yourself rather than putting plates on the table, for example.
An infinitive verb will have ‘se’ on the end to indicate that it is reflexive. For example: ducharse.
However, if the verb needs to be conjugated (put into present, future, past, etc) then we remove the ‘se’ from the end and treat it as a normal verb ‘duchar’. Once conjugated, we add the correct reflexive pronoun for the person doing the action, and then we place it in front of the verb.
Thus, ‘me ducho’, ‘te duchas’, ‘se ducha’, ‘nos duchamos’, ‘os ducháis’, ‘se duchan’.
We also use these pronouns if someone is doing an action that affects somebody else, with the exception of ‘se’ which is changed to ‘le’ if referring to ‘he or she’ and ‘les’ when referring to ‘them’.
Thus: ‘I speak to myself’ (reflexive) is ‘yo me hablo’ and ‘You speak to me’ (not reflexive) is ‘me hablas’.
However: ‘He speaks to himself’ (reflexive) is ”el se habla’ but ‘I speak to him’ (not reflexive) is ‘yo le hablo’.
Important takeaway: these pronouns tell you ‘who is being affected’.
Pronombres preposicionales
Prepositional pronouns are words that refer to or replace a noun, and are placed after a preposition (a, para, por, de, desde, hasta, etc.)
We have a different word to refer to ‘me’, and ‘you’ after a preposition, whereas the remaining pronouns are the same as the personal pronouns. Therefore we could say: para mí, para ti, para él o ella, para nosotros, para vosotros, para ellos.
The pronoun ‘sí’ is exclusively reflexive. Thus if he bought them for himself we could say ‘para sí mismo’, but if I bought them for him, we would say ‘para él’.
We usually place the word mismo/misma/mismos/mismas after a prepositional pronoun if it is used reflexively. This is done for emphasis and has no literal translation.
We also have special words for ‘with me’ and ‘with you’ which would be ‘conmigo’ and ‘contigo’, respectively.
Again, ‘consigo’ would be exclusively reflexive. In a non-reflexive sentence, we would revert to con él o con ella.
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