Italian subject pronouns
From UniLang Wiki
Italian is a pro-drop language. This means that the subject pronoun is often omitted when not necessary for understanding. This is more often than not the case since Italian verb endings change according to each person and number. The subject pronoun is only included for clarification or emphasis.
Vado al lavoro. I'm going to work.
Io vado al lavoro. I'm going to work (not you). [But perhaps more naturally: Vado al lavoro io]
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | io I | noi we |
| 2nd | tu you (informal) Lei you (formal) |
voi you (neutral) Loro you (formal) |
| 3rd | lui he lei she |
loro they |
Use tu to address God, relatives, friends, children, and animals.
The formal form Lei is used to address strangers, authority figures, people with title. Loro can be used for the plural in these instances, but voi is more common in all occurrences of the 2nd person plural.
In formal contexts, lui may be replaced with egli, lei with ella, and loro with essi (m) and esse (f). Lui, lei, and loro are colloquial forms, but sound rude in formal contexts. The reason is that the two different pronouns have different syntactical use: "egli, ella ,essi, esse" is subject and "lui, lei, loro" are complement.
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