Lesson 22: He and him, they and them and the formal you
We'll be clarifying the correct uses of he 'él' versus him 'lo', they 'ellos' versus them 'los' and how this works with the formal and informal you.
But first a quick recap
Using he present tense to talk about the past - recap
In the last lesson we looked at how to use 'Haber' ("to have [done/had]") to talk about events in the past. We also learnt how to build the various forms of 'haber' based on the 'a' and 'e' sound in the verb itself.
 Spanish |  English |
|---|---|
| Haber | To have [done/had] |
| He | I have [done/had] |
| Hemos | We have [done/had] |
| He terminado | I've finished |
| Lo he terminado | I've finished it |
| Los he terminado | I've finished them |
Now its always a good mental exercise when you come across a new verb in some form (like 'terminado') to work backwards and see what other forms you can get. For example:
- it ends 'ado' so we know it is an 'ar' verb so now we know 'terminar' is the to form
- Now we know the to form we can work out all the other ones:
- 'termino' ("I finish")
- 'terminas' ("you informal finish")
- 'termina' ("he finishes")
- 'terminamos' ("we finish")
- 'terminan' ("they/you guys finish")
- We can also work out all the past forms using 'haber
- 'has terminado' ("you informal have finished")
- 'ha terminado' ("he has finished")
- 'hemos termindo' ("we have finished")
- 'han terminado' ("they/you guys have finished")
Again we don't want to sit and memorise this, we just want to go through the exercise - perhaps on a scrap piece of paper - of creating all the forms based on the rules we know rather than on what we remember.
Continuously doing this when we come across verbs will strengthen our ability to find the correct forms faster in the long term.
Haber with 'er' and 'ir' verbs
In the last lesson we said:
- for 'ar' verbs (e.g. 'hablar') we take off the 'ar' and add on 'ado' - 'hablado' ("spoken").
- for 'er' and 'ir' verbs we take off the 'er' or 'ir' and add on 'ido'
... but we didn't practice any 'er' or 'ir' verbs. So for 'Vender' ("to sell") and 'Venir' ("to come")
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Vendido | Sold |
| Venido | Come |
And now we can see where 'Bienvenido' ("Welcome") comes from - 'Bien' which means "good" or "well" - "I am well" - and 'venido ("come")
So some more@
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Perdido | Lost |
| He perdido | I have lost |
| Hemos perdido | We have lost |
| Ha perdido | He has lost |
| Has perdido | You (informal) have lost |
Nosotros and Nosotras
We covered earlier that, most of the time, we don't say "I" or "you" or "he" in Spanish because the way we say the verb tells the listener who we are talking about.
But occassionally we do if we need to provide some clarity - say between 'él' ("he") and 'ella' ("she") - or if we want to emphasis a point like "he has lost".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Él ha perdido | He has lost |
| Ella ha perdido | She has lost |
| Tú has perdido | You (informal) have lost |
When we want to say "we" it's going to depend on who "we" are:
- 'Nosotros' a group of males or males and females.
- 'Nosotras' a group of females only.
And here once again we see that connection between 'a' and feminine as we did when we noted that almost all verbs which end 'a' are feminine.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Nosotros | We (male or mixed group) |
| Nosotras | We (female group) |
Tú and te
One confusing area of Spanish is the use of 'Tú' and 'te' which both mean "you" (informal).
One of the more common phrases you will hear in Spanish is:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Te quiero | I love you |
So why 'te and not tú?
The issue here is that we have something missing in English - we say "He" and "him" but we don't differientiate "you" in the same way.
We have:
- I
- You
- He
- She
- It
- We
- They
But to reference a person we have
- Me
- You
- Him
- Her
- It
- Us
- Them
The underlined versions are the overlap in English that we hardly notice when we are familiar with the language
So we wouldn't say "I love he", we say "I love him" and we say "He loves me", however for "you" we say "I love you" and "You love me".
Spanish, on the other hand, has two forms of 'you' just as English speakers have two forms for 'he' - he and him.
So the way to remember this is: If you would use 'him' then use 'te'.
- ''Yo' - I
- ''Tú' - You
- ''Él' - He
- ''Ella' - She
- ''Él' or 'Ella' - It
- ''Nosotros' or 'Nosotras' - We
- ''Ellos' or ''Ellas' - They
But to reference a person we have
- ''Me' - Me
- ''Te' - You
- ''Lo' - Him
- ''La' - Her
- ''Lo' or 'La' - It
- ''Nos' - Us
- ''Los' or 'Las' - Them
So we have one way round, the forms we all learnt at school:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Él ve | He sees |
| Ella ve | She sees |
| Nosotros vemos | We see |
| Tú ves | You (informal) see |
| Ellos ven | They (males) see |
And the other way round when we are referring to something
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Lo veo | I see it (male word) / him / you (formal, to a male) |
| La veo | I see it (female word) / her / you (formal, to afemale) |
| Las veo | I see them (group of females or feminine things) |
| Los veo | I see them (group of males/mixed or masculine/mixed things) |
And both!
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Ellos me ven | They see me |
| Ellos los ven | They see them |
| Ellas los ven | They see them |
| Ellas las ven | They see them |
These last three all mean exactly the same but to get things 100% right you need to know which bits of the sentence are referring to masculine or feminine words. That will come over time and you will be perfectly understood if you just use 'los' in the beginning.
Remembering "it" and "them"
Now one question that comes up is what do you use for "it" or "they" when you don't know if it is, or they are, male or female. Not as in don't know because you can't remember(!) but because there is no male/female.
For example "it" can refer to a situation. Some langauges do have something known as the 'neutral' but Spanish just defaults to masculine.
Remembering this gives us a way to work out everything else around "it" and "them".
- The default is 'lo' for "it".
- Time and time again we see 'a' related to femine things so we replace 'o' with 'a' to get 'la' which is "it" for a femine word.
- To get the plurals ("them") we do the same as we do in English - add an 's' to get ''Los' or 'Las'
Usted - the formal you
So if 'Tú' means "you" when we are speaking to someone informally how do we say "You" formally.
This is actually very similar to English. In English we refer to people in the third person - "Would Sir like a coffee?" or "Would Madam like a coffee?".
In Spanish we use 'Usted' which came originally from 'vuestro merced' - "Your honor". Or some say it came from the Arabic 'ustadh' which means "doctor" or "professor". But generally if you just remember it as "Sir" you will use it correctly.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Usted ve | You (formal) see |
| Usted lo ve | You (formal) see it |
| Lo ve usted | You (formal) see it |
The last two mean the same thing and it is just to demonstrate that where you put the 'Usted' is pretty flexible in Spanish as long as it ends up in there and this contrasts with 'lo' which must go before the changed verb!
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Usted los ve | You (formal) see them |