You. Me. Him. Her. Them. Us.

I have problems with pronouns.

Spanish is organized in such a way that often it is not necessary to use pronouns. The ending of the verbs indicate the subject of the sentence, and the two letter object pronouns indicate the object. It’s pretty straightforward, but you have to know what you’re saying before you say it or else you’ll get hung up on the objects that go before the verbs and the subject that determines the end of words. My comprehension of Spanish, both written and spoken, is very good, but I still get hung up on the pronouns, or lack thereof. It can be very ambiguous, especially for the careless listener. The gender of the subject is oftentimes hidden, and the subjunctive form of verbs further puts an air of uncertainty on the sentence. The verb ending for el, ella, and usted (him, her, and you formal) is the same, so for me it gets very awkward trying to address someone formally because I feel like they don’t know I’m talking to them. Subjunctive further blurs the lines, because it indicates doubt, uncertainty, and the desire for someone to do something. Today in translation we were translating instructions for the installation of a CD-ROM drive in a computer, and the most recognized way of writing instructions is using the you formal command, which is in subjunctive. So translated it’s kind of like, I command you to do this… if you want.

If any of that makes any sense. Lately I’ve been noticing that people’ll be talking to me, and they’ll say something that I understand, but then they’ll look at me, and they’ll wait for a response. And then I realize they were talking about me, and I say, “¿Yo?” or sometimes I forget myself and say, “¿Mi?” like the English me. The other day I was standing with a friend, half listening to his conversation with our magazine advisor. And then I realized he (notice the ambiguous he) was talking to/about me, so I said, “¿Yo?” really loud. I need to get over that. Obviously if someone is talking to me they’re talking about me.