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Spanish personal pronouns have distinct forms according to whether they stand for the subject (nominative case) or object, and third-person pronouns make an additional distinction for direct object (accusative case) or indirect object (dative case), and for reflexivity as well. Several pronouns also have special forms used after .
Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns, and, like many European languages, Spanish makes a T-V distinction in second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns can be both clitic and non-clitic, with non-clitic forms carrying greater emphasis. With clitic pronouns, proclitic forms are much more common, but enclitic forms are mandatory in certain situations. There is significant regional variation in the use of personal pronouns, especially second-person pronouns.
| + Spanish personal pronouns |
| con vos1 |
| con usted, consigo3 |
| con ustedes, consigo3 |
English subject pronouns are generally not translated into Spanish if neither clarity nor emphasis is an issue. "I think" is generally translated as just Creo unless the speaker contrasts their views with those of someone else or places emphasis on the fact that their views are their own and not somebody else's.
Third-person masculine and feminine pronouns ( él, ella, ellos, and ellas) can refer to grammatically masculine and feminine objects as well as people, but their explicit use as subjects is somewhat uncommon, and restricted to people. The third-person neuter singular pronoun ello is likewise rarely used as an explicit subject in everyday language, although such usage is found in formal and literary contexts. Quite unusually among European languages, the first- and second-person plural subject pronouns ( nosotros/nosotras and vosotros/vosotras, respectively) inflect for gender: nosotros and vosotros are used to refer to groups of men (as well as mixed-gender groups), while nosotras and vosotras are used exclusively to refer to groups of women.
The usage of Tú/Vos and Usted depends on a number of factors, such as the number of people with whom the speaker is talking, the formality or informality of the relationship between the speaker and the other person, the age difference between them, and the regional variation of Spanish.
Using the usted form to address 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 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. Tú is also used to address God, in parallel with English's otherwise-abandoned use of thou. Usage changed in the 20th century in Spain, and a woman who addressed her mother as using usted could experience that her children call her and use tú. Also, in Spain the Falangists and the Communists promoted the tuteo as a sign of worker solidarity.
One can give offense by addressing someone with tú instead of usted, similar to inappropriately calling someone by their first name in English; conversely, it can also be awkward to use usted if tú would be expected, which suggests too much social distance or implies that the person addressed is being haughty. Spanish has a verb, tutear, meaning to use the familiar form tú to address a person. If speakers feel that the relationship with the conversant has evolved, sometimes only after a few minutes of conversation, to a point that a shift from usted to tú is desirable, they often confirm that by asking if it is acceptable: Nos tuteamos, ¿verdad? or ¿Te puedo tutear? is fairly common. In Anglophone countries, that would be roughly analogous to asking if it is acceptable to call someone by their first name.
In the plural, in Spain (other than the Canary Islands and parts of western Andalusia), the usage of the familiar vosotros/vosotras and the polite ustedes is identical to the usage of tú/usted. In the Canary Islands as well as those parts of western Andalusia, in addition to all of Spanish America, vosotros is not used except in very formal contexts such as oratory, and ustedes is the familiar as well as the polite plural.
The distinction extends to other types of pronouns and modifiers: when using usted one must also use the third-person object pronouns and possessive adjectives. "italic=no" (tú with an (acute) diacritic is the subject pronoun, tu with no accent is a possessive adjective) means "your house" in the familiar singular: the owner of the house is one person, and it is a person with whom one has the closer relationship the tú form implies. In contrast, su casa can mean "his/her/their house, but it can also mean "your house" in the polite singular: the owner of the house is someone with whom one has the more distant or formal relationship implied by the use of usted.
Similarly, the use of usted requires third-person object pronouns except in some Andalusian dialects. Te lavas means "you familiar wash yourself", but se lava can mean "you polite wash yourself" as well as "he/she/it washes himself/herself/itself"'.
| nos |
| os |
| se |
The reflexive pronoun is used with pronominal verbs, also known as reflexive verbs. These verbs require the use of the reflexive pronoun, appropriate to the subject. Some transitive verbs can take on a reflexive meaning, such as lavar (to wash) and lavarse (to wash oneself). Other verbs have reflexive forms which do not take on a reflexive meaning, such as ir (to go) and irse (to go away). Some verbs only have reflexive forms, such as jactarse (to boast).
The nominal intensifier in Spanish (equivalent to English "myself", "yourself", "themselves", etc. when used after a noun) is mismo, which in this case is placed after the noun it modifies and behaves like a normal adjective. Thus:
Unlike English intensifiers, which are often placed several words after the noun they modify (e.g. "I did it myself"), Spanish intensifiers must come immediately after the noun they modify.
In Spanish, two (and rarely three) clitic pronouns can be used with a single verb, generally one accusative and one dative. They follow a specific order based primarily on person:
| lo, la, los, las, le, les |
Thus:
The full and pronominal form of a reduplicated direct object must agree in gender and number:
When an accusative third-person non-reflexive pronoun ( lo, la, los, or las) is used with a dative pronoun that is understood to also be third-person non-reflexive ( le or les), the dative pronoun is replaced by se. Simple non-emphatic clitic doubling is most often found with dative clitics, although it is occasionally found with accusative clitics as well. In a wide area in central Spain, including Madrid, there exists the practice of leísmo; which is, using the indirect object pronoun le for the object pronoun where Standard Spanish would use lo (masculine) or la (feminine) for the object pronoun.
After ser, however, the definite article is usually omitted:
To avoid ambiguity in the meaning of suyo, it may be replaced by de + the appropriate pronoun:
The neuter article lo can also be used with genitive pronouns to express the concept of "what is mine", "what is yours", "what is his", etc.: lo mío, lo tuyo, lo suyo, etc.
Genitive pronouns are identical in form to long-form possessive adjectives, which may be placed after the noun to place emphasis on the fact of possession.
In some areas, like the River Plate region, vos has become the only generic form of address for the second-person singular, that is, it has the same meaning that tú has elsewhere (informal and intimate). In other areas, like Chile, it persists as a fairly stigmatized form alongside the more prestigious tú. In some other areas, it is employed among equals but not for very close people (couples or family) or to inferiors (children, animals etc.), where the pronoun tú would normally be used.
Judaeo-Spanish uses vos as well but uses it as in Old Spanish (see above), that is, as a respectful form of address, equivalent to how usted is used elsewhere. In fact, Ladino does not use usted at all because vos implies the same respect that it once had in Old Spanish. In Ladino, tú is used towards anyone in an informal manner.
In the local Spanish-based creole, Chavacano, the use of vos coexists alongside tú and usted depending on level of intimacy, commonality, and formality.
Vuestra merced (literally "your grace") is the origin of usted, usarcé and similar forms that govern third-person verb forms with a second-person function. They are now confined mostly to period works.
It is unlikely that the similar-sounding Arabic أستاذ (), meaning "professor", was involved in the formation of Spanish usted because of the weakness of the semantic link and the fact that usted is not documented before 1598, over a century after the fall of Moorish Granada.
Throughout Latin America, the second person plural pronoun ustedes is almost always used orally in both formal (singular usted) and informal (singular tú/vos) contexts. However, vosotros and its related forms are not unheard of in Latin America. The use of vosotros was more widespread in formal, educated speech in Hispanic America around the time of the Spanish American wars of independence.
Even in modern times, the use of vosotros may still be found in , legal documents, or other highly formal or archaic contexts in Latin America. Spanish studies scholar has noted that because the "use of archaic Spanish can give an impression of authority and wisdom", Latin American Spanish speakers will sometimes use vosotros to achieve a specific rhetorical effect; he observed that the notion "that italic=yes is not used in Spanish America is one of the great myths of Spanish language instruction, at least in the U.S.", citing as an example the following quote, which employs the genitive (possessive) form of the word, vuestro:
In Chavacano, spoken in the Philippines, vo is used alongside tu as a singular second-person pronoun in Zamboangueño, Caviteño, and Ternateño. In Zamboangueño, evos is also used. For the plural, Zamboangueño has vosotros while Caviteño has vusos. Papiamento, spoken in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, maintains boso (singular) and bosonan (plural). Since it was used with slaves, the forms that seemed disrespectful in the rest of America were common.
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