Pronombres Personales (Personal Pronouns)

Pronouns in general are words that are used to refer to someone or something without having to use that particular
objects name over and over again. For example, “That is my baseball, can you give it to me so I can put
it away?” instead of “That is my baseball, can you give me my baseball so I can put my
baseball away?” It is pretty obvious from the context of the sentence that we are referring to a baseball…
not a car or a spaceship. The same goes in Spanish, “Esa es mi pelota, me la das para que la
ponga en su lugar?”

Personal pronouns pop up in a lot of different way in Spanish. Before we get into all that, let’s look at what they are:

As you can see, there are a lot of them to remember, and how you use them depends on which type you are using.
Some pretty basic rules for using these are as follows:

Double Object Pronouns

If a verb has two object pronouns, the indirect goes before the direct object pronoun.

Example: If you are done with the crayons, could you give them to me?
Si ya acabaste con las crayolas,
dámelas.
da – the command form of “dar” (to give)
me – the indirect pronoun referring to the person to whom you are giving the crayons
las – the direct pronoun referring to the crayons themselves

If both the direct and indirect object pronouns begin with l, the indirect pronoun is changed to se.

Example: Give it to him.
Dáselo (not “Dálelo”)

Position of the with-verb object pronouns

Direct, indirect and reflexive object pronouns are attached to the end of infinitives, -ndo forms (gerunds) and affirmative commands.
They go immediately before all other verb forms.

Example: Are you going to eat those grapes, or are you going to put them away?
Vas a comer esas uvas, o las vas a poner en su lugar?
las – the same
direct pronoun gets attached to the gerund form of verbs

Special cases:

• Conmigo – with me
• Contigo – with you

In general, understanding personal pronouns in Spanish is not much different from learning them in English. There are more of them,
which can make it more confusing, but the patterns become easier to understand with practice.

Something to bear in mind is the emphasis on certain syllables and the accent marks. If a particular word has the emphasis placed on
any syllable other than the second-to-last (a.k.a. penultimate) syllable, then an accent mark is usually placed over that syllable to
emphasize that. This is usually noteworthy when conjugating verbs between present tense and past tense. For example, the verb “caminar”
(to walk) conjugates to “camino” (I walk) or “caminó” (he walked) depending on the context. In the first conjugation, we put the emphasis
on “mi”, whereas in the second conjugation, the emphasis goes on the “nó”.

When using direct and indirect pronouns, you will likely run into scenarios where the length of the word in question will imply that
accents should be used. For example, “dámelas” puts an accent on the first “a” because the emphasis is now on the third-to-last syllable.

Pronombres Personales Practice Quiz