Implied subject

Some time ago we were discussing null or implied subjects in Spanish and my American student compared it to the use of contractions in English.

In a very similar way, when we use contractions we sound more fluent in English, and so do we when we drop the subject pronoun in Spanish.

We refer to those hidden subjects as sujetos tácitos.

I bet most English speakers would argue that contractions are not that difficult to incorporate, and that most Spanish speakers drop subject pronouns as easily.

Spanish, along with other languages such as Italian, Chinese and Arabic, belongs to the group of languages that permit sentences with null subjects. On the other hand, languages such as German, French and English, don’r do that.

At least in Spanish, the reason why we can drop the subject is because the verb carries much more information than in English. You need only see/hear the form of the verb to understand who the subject is in a particular sentence.

So, next time you have to choose between:

Yo me llamo x and Me llamo x, go for the second.

Start small and then scale it up!

Good luck!

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