The Italian personal pronouns are how we refer to people without using names. They work more or less in the same way as English with just a couple of important points to mention.
Here are the Italian Personal Pronouns:
IO → I
TU → you
LUI → he
LEI → she
LEI → you (formal and polite)
NOI → we
VOI → you (plural – you guys, you all, you both)
LORO → they
How Can I Know When to Use TU or LEI in Italian?
When it comes to addressing people directly as “you”, Italian has two main registers: informal and formal. Any situation where you don’t know someone very well, or where there is a definite status difference, (patient-doctor, employer-employee, etc.) would be considered formal.
The difference between using TU and LEI to address someone is quite an important one in Italian. If you address someone you just met as TU, you may be perceived as rude, however, as a non-native speaker, Italians will most likely understand that you are still learning the language and are not yet familiar with the social rules of Italian.
A lot of students say they are never quite sure when to use TU or LEI when speaking with an Italian. You can pretty much guarantee that if it’s someone you just met, especially if they are older than you, then LEI is the one to use. The only time when you can be sure that it’s OK to use TU straight away is if you are addressing children and adolescents.
Basically, in any situation, if you are unsure, it’s always best to go with LEI.
It’s generally best to take your cue from the Italians you are speaking with. If you hear that someone is referring to you as TU then that’s a pretty good indication that they have deemed the situation and relationship to be informal enough to use it.
When addressing more than one person, VOI is used in both formal and informal settings, so you don’t need to worry about using two different terms.
Why Italians Don’t Actually Use Personal Pronouns
When it comes to Personal Pronouns, one of the main distinctions between Italian and English is that Pronouns are usually omitted in Italian. This is because the verb tells us who the Subject is, as the verb takes a different form for each person: I, you, he, she, etc. This is called Verb Conjugation, which you will learn about in the next part.
So, when we talk about degrees of formality and using TU or LEI to address someone as you, we aren’t strictly talking about the use of the Pronoun itself, but the form of the verb that corresponds to the appropriate Pronoun. This will all make much more sense once we look at how Italian Verb Conjugation works.
Another interesting fact about Italian is that there is no word for the pronoun ‘it’. As Italian uses grammatical gender for everything, the concept of a gender-neutral ‘it’ does not exist (grammatically speaking). This is coupled with the fact that Subject Pronouns are not obligatory in Italian, unlike English.
For example:
In English, we say: IT is raining
What even is ‘it’ that is raining? No one really knows, but it’s more about the fact that English sentences HAVE to have an explicit subject, whereas Italian doesn’t.
The Italian equivalent (PIOVE) is the same as saying: is raining
If you listen to Italians who are still learning to speak English, you may notice that they often omit the Subject ‘it’ in sentences and say things like, “is raining!” and “is beautiful.”
Keep this in mind when we start looking at how verbs are used in Italian.