soy, yo soy?
  • gkim January 18
    Hello everyone.
    This might be a silly question but I just started the Beginner's Spanish course and was wondering what the difference was between soy and yo soy. Also, does estoy mean the same thing? Thank you.
  • Christopher January 18
    Hi there. Anna can weigh in if necessary, but in Spanish, you can omit subject pronouns if it's plain from context who the subject is, or unless you really want to stress the subject. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that rule of thumb should cover the majority of cases.

    So, short answer, soy and yo soy mean the same thing literally, but you'd probably be more likely to say yo soy if you're stressing you (as opposed to the person you're talking to).

    Anna did a great note on ser vs. estar. It's right in this Spanish category, called Estar and Ser. It's also covered in the first few lessons of Essential. 
  • shay January 18
    it`s not an issue of stress or no stress and not just related to the verbs of ser and estar.
    in spanish in contra to spanish if you conjugate a verb you know exactly on whom is spoken and you can loss the pronoun.
    for example in English you know that am is only a conjugation attached to I.
    so in spnish you don`t have to say yo soy( I am) you can say just soy/
    or instead of tu eres (you are) just eres.
    and chris it is more common to use just the conjugation that the full complete saying.

    About ser and estar: first ser and estar are like to be in English and you always use when you speak about situations/things and not verbs/actions.
    Ser is used usually for fix stady things like physical and personal characters, civil status,origin,religion,profession.
    Estar is for tamporary changing things usually for personal mode and location.
    Duplication can be between ser and estar regarding definition of tamporary cause issue of time is relative.
    One can say "soy gordo" and he says he's fat.
    One can say "estoy gordo" and i"ll thing he's on a diet or he thinks it tamporary.
  • Christopher January 18
    No, it's not just related to ser and estar, that's right. And yes it is more common to just use the conjugated verb, also correct.

    You're making what linguists call the morphological richness argument for pro-drop, Shay. In other words, if a language has rich enough conjugation morphology, dropping subject pronouns is possible. That makes sense at first glance, but there are actually plenty of counterexamples. Chinese, for example, is a pro-drop language that's famously morphological impoverished. 

    The best explanations seem to be related to things like contrastive stress and pragmatics. In most cases, we're not stressing a subject and we know the referents of discourse, so if a language allows pro-drop, it's more common that using the pronouns. There are lots of theories in the literature, but most linguists reject the idea the morphological richness argument.
  • shay January 18
    But we are not talking about Chinese we are talking about Spanish and we are not linguists.
    we can't sometimes use there professional turms and use bombastic words instead of just simple and direct English.
    cause one may not be able to understand what you are trying to say.
    for anology it reminds me of math teachers who enter class and talk and solve for themselves and trow turms on to the air.
    which they don't get why you look at them and say What with can you say it in English now.
    There's a nice old jewish phrase
    "Educa el niño segun su camina" (educate the boy by his own way).
    It means like the saying speak with someone in his own language.
    In hebrew slang it is to speak at eyes hight

  • Christopher January 18
    Sorry my answer was too technical, Shay. (We're linguistics, myself, some of the editorial team, a few eTutors, and several of our authors. So sometimes we forget that the terms we use every day are not familiar to everyone. Occupational hazard!)

    To put it a bit clearer, a lot of people have tried to explain why subject pronouns are often dropped in some languages by tying it to the richness of the verb's conjugation. ("The ending tells you who the subject is, so it's not necessary." We even use that explanation in some of courses.)

    But it turns out that that's not quite right, at least beyond being a nice shorthand to avoid muddying the waters too much. If the richness of the verb conjugation were relevant, we'd expect languages with rich conjugations to show a lot of this optional pronoun use, and we'd expect languages with few - or no - endings not to allow pronouns to be dropped. That's where Chinese (and Japanese, and many other languages) come in. They allow pronouns to be dropped, even though there's no ending to show who the subject is.

    French and German are the opposite; they both have pretty rich conjugations, but don't allow pronouns to be dropped.

    Does that make more sense? 
  • shay January 18
    That i know cause as you know me by now i speak spanish and english and other stuff so i know these stuff by now.
    We know that in Latin Language we can drop the personal subject pronouns cause these are the rules of the language and there is and option to.
    Just like in math there is no need to use the quadric equation you can do a trinum. languages are just different from another just like Criminology and CIvil Engineering are different.
    Languages are said apart cause people like to differ and change and be unique.
    For Americans Briths are wierd people who speak wierd English.
    There is a saying that the bible has 70 faces cause if you put 2 jews in a room they"ll give you 70 opinions.
    From that comes the joke that if you save a jew from a deserted island you'll see two tamples that he built.
    One two go two and the other to band.
  • Christopher January 19
    70 opinions, ha ha! I've heard that one before; it's good.

    The idea that languages are just different because, "well, they are," hasn't really been the common thinking in the field since Chomsky came along in the late 50s. There seems to be a lot more similarity than might meet the eye, and the differences are systematic, where there are differences, such as the optional use of subject pronouns. But you can look further into that if it interests you. 

    gkim, sorry about the long meandering away from your question! Soy and yo soy mean the same thing, but there are certain situations when a speaker might use yo soy instead of just soy, or yo hablo (I speak) instead of just hablo ([I] speak). I'll ask Anna to give us some examples that will help.
  • Anna January 19
    Hello everyone!

    @gkim:

    To start let's review the list of Subject pronouns: 

    yo — I
    tú — you (informal or familiar singular)
    usted — you (formal singular)
    él, ella — he, she
    nosotros, nosotras — we 
    vosotros, vosotras — you (informal or familiar plural)
    ustedes — you (formal plural)
    ellos, ellas — they

    When speaking spanish fluently people tend to omit the subject pronouns in many cases (but not always), since all the information about Who is the subject of the action is implicit in the conjugated verb.

    See this example:

    - Yo soy gkim
    - Soy gkim

    The meaning is exactly the same, (the verb soy only matches the subject pronoun yo) "Soy" cannot be used with any other of the pronouns, so when you say "soy gKim" the subject yo is implicit. We call this "Null-subject" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-subject_language

    This happens in many other languages, such Italian, Chinese and Japanese.

    Said this, there are situations when soy and yo soy can have a slightly different connotation. I want to give you an example of when using both:

    Situation 1: you are standing in the lobby of a building waiting to meet someone and the doorman asks you ¿Quién es usted? (Who are you?) You will respond "Soy gKim Smith..."

    Situation 2: the doorman asks another person at the lobby who is he, and the person answers, "Soy gkim Smith...". You want the doorman know that is not true, and you interrupt saying "Yo soy gkim Smith!".

    In Situation 1, you can either say "yo soy gkim Smith", or "soy gkim Smith". Native speakers will tend to omit the subject and say "soy gkim Smith".

    In Situation 2, by saying "yo soy" using the subject that is already implicit in the verb you are reinforcing the idea that you are the real gKim, like a repetition would do.

    I hope this example solves your question!

    Going forward, since you are just starting I would recommend to use the Subject pronouns. It will make your learning process easier until you are ready to start omitting them. Saying the pronoun will help you to find the right verb conjugation, but whenever you feel comfortable to omit the verb do it!

    Let me know if you have more questions or the answer is unclear, I will post a new example for you. 

    Have a great Saturday!

    -Anna

    PS: Heres is another post to learn when to use ser vs estar. http://www.livinglanguage.com/community/discussion/168/-ser-verse-estar-#Item_5
    If you have questions on that please use the link to post your comment there and follow the same threat.

  • gkim January 19
    Thank you Shay and Christopher for your helpful posts!
    Thanks so much for the great advice Anna, your examples were very informative!
    It is so nice to have this kind of resource and support.
  • shay January 21
    Anna can you exploit the thread and put also material maybe about the negation both single and double and the dropping of the pronoun.
    Also how common it is to put the no not between the pronoun and ser/estar rather after them like yo soy no abogado instead of
    Yo no soy abogado
  • Anna January 22
    Hola Shay! La negación es español es muy fácil de aprender.

    To create a negative sentence, for instance "I am not a layer", "You don't want to do homework", we use the particle NO always in front of the verb.

    - The adverb NO is always placed in front of the verb:

    Yo no soy un abogado.
    Tú no quieres hacer las tareas.

    - More negative sentences are:

    María no tiene tiempo. María does not have time
    El restaurante no acepta tarjeta de crédito. The restaurant does not take credit cards.

    There is an exception to this rule. When the verb is precede by an object, the adverb NO it comes right before the object.

    Examples:
    ¿No te gusta el café? (Don't you like cooffe?)  
    No me gusta el deporte. (I don't like sports)
    No lo como. (I don't eat it)

    No te gastes todo el dinero (Don't spend all the money)

    Easy right?
  • shay January 23
    so it means that we can`t say yo soy no abogado sino yo no soy abogado.
  • Anna January 23
    That is right! You cannot say "Yo soy no abogado", instead the correct sentence is "Yo no soy abogado".

    -Anna
  • Mahima January 29
    Hola Anna !

    Gracias por los ejemplos. Estoy aprendiendo :)
    Yo no soy un mal estudiante. Es verdad ?

    Mahima
  • Anna January 29
    ¡Hola Mahima!

    Claro que no eres mala estudiante. ¡Todo lo contrario!

    Very clever use of the negative, by the way.


  • Mahima January 30
    Gracias ! Algunas Preguntas -
    1) You have used mala instead of mal. Is the word "estudiante" feminine? Or is it ok to use either?
    2) Here's what I could translate of what you have written -
    "It is clear that you are not a bad student. Infact the contrary." - Is it correct?
    3) I think I got the 1st sentence more or less correct, but the second part had me wondering a bit as "Todo" literally means "all".
    Though I, basically, understood what was being said. I would not have been able to frame the same sentence in a similar way, in Spanish.
    I guess when we begin learning a language, our stepping stones are the literal meanings of words. However, as we progress, and maybe try and strike a conversation, the message and underlying connotation bears effect, which escapes the notice of a new learner, in this case me.
    Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

    Mahima
  • Anna January 30
    Hello Mahima,

    Here are your answers, please write back if you need more help or more examples!

    1) Estudiante can be masculine or feminine, depending on if the student is a male or a female. So you can use it either way,, always depending on the gender of the student.

    - Yo no soy mal estudiante.
    - Yo no soy mala estudiante.

    We will adapt the adjective mala, depending on the gender as well!

    2-3) Todo lo contrato (Literal. All the oposite) Meaning: In fact the contrary.
    "Todo los contrario" is an expression and you may not translate word by word, so you did a great job in catching the meaning.

    It is very important the effort you are doing to try to get the general meaning of the sentences and do not stick with the literal word by word translation. However most of what you will hear in Spanish will have a literal meaning, but idioms and sayings are very common in any language so it's good to get introduced to them too.

    ¡Buen trabajo!

    More sentences: 

    - Yo no soy mala profesora. (I am not a bad teacher (fem.))
    - Yo no soy trabajadora. (I am not hard worker (fem.))
    - Yo no soy perezoso. (I am not lazy (masc.))
    - Tú no eres impaciente (You are not impatient (either masc. or fem.))
    - Ella no es aburrida (She is not boring (fem.))


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