In short

Italian has subject pronouns - io, tu, lui/lei, noi, voi, loro - but normally leaves them out, because the verb ending already says who is speaking. You add a pronoun only to contrast or emphasise. To be polite with a stranger, use Lei and put the verb in the third person singular.

The rule

Step 1 - Know the seven pronouns

Two things surprise English speakers immediately:

• There is no “it”. Italian has no subject pronoun for things. English It is on the table is simply È sul tavolo. Weather and impersonal statements have no subject at all: Piove (It’s raining), È tardi (It’s late).
• loro covers both genders. There is no they-masculine vs they-feminine split in the subject pronoun; loro does all the work.

(You may meet egli, ella, esso/essa, essi/esse in old books. They are literary and effectively dead in speech - do not learn them as active forms.)

Step 2 - Leave the pronoun out by default

Italian verb endings are distinct enough to identify the person on their own, so the pronoun is redundant and sounds heavy when repeated. This is the normal, native way to speak:

• Sono italiano. - not Io sono italiano.
• Abitiamo a Roma. - not Noi abitiamo a Roma.

Think of the verb ending as the pronoun: -o already means io, -iamo already means noi.

Step 3 - Put the pronoun back for contrast or emphasis

Use the pronoun when it does real work - when you are pointing at who, as opposed to someone else:

• Contrast: Io lavoro, lui dorme. (I work, he sleeps.) Two subjects set against each other.
• Emphasis: Pago io. (I’ll pay - me, not you.)
• Standing alone, with no verb: Chi vuole il caffè? - Io.
• After anche / neanche / proprio: Anch’io sono stanco.
• To disambiguate: lui and lei take the same verb form, so Lei è a Milano, lui è a Torino keeps them apart.

Step 4 - Use Lei to be polite

To address one adult you do not know, Italian uses Lei - and Lei takes the third person singular, exactly like lui/lei. You are grammatically talking about the person, not to them.

Lei is genderless. It comes from an old feminine phrase (la Signoria Vostra, “Your Lordship”), which is why the pronoun is feminine and takes feminine third-person agreement - but you use it for men and women alike. The adjective, however, agrees with the real person in front of you:

• To a man: Lei è stanco, signore?
• To a woman: Lei è stanca, signora?

Write it with a capital L. In writing, Lei (polite) is capitalised to separate it from lei (she). In speech only context tells them apart - and since the pronoun is usually dropped anyway (È italiano?), context is doing most of the work.

Step 5 - Choose the register

• tu - family, friends, children, classmates, colleagues your own age, anyone who offers it. Increasingly the default among young people.
• Lei - strangers, shop and office staff, older people, anyone with signore/signora/dottore in front of their name. Start with Lei when in doubt; it is never rude to be too formal.
• In the plural, use voi for everyone - friends and strangers alike. The old polite plural Loro survives only in very formal service situations, so voi is the safe and normal plural of both tu and Lei.
• Italians say Diamo del tu? to propose dropping the formality. Let the older person or the local make the offer.

Forms & patterns

The pronouns with essere and avere:

Which “you” do I use?

Drop it or keep it:

Examples

Common mistakes

• Io sono studente. Io abito a Roma. Io ho vent’anni. -> Sono studente. Abito a Roma. Ho vent’anni. - the ending already says io; repeating the pronoun sounds insistent, like shouting “ME” every line.
• Esso è sul tavolo. -> È sul tavolo. - Italian has no subject “it”. Never translate an English dummy subject.
• Lei parli italiano? -> Lei parla italiano? - Lei is polite, but the verb is third person singular, never second.
• Scusi, Lei è stanca? (to a man) -> Scusi, Lei è stanco? - the pronoun is feminine by history, but the adjective agrees with the real person.
• Chi vuole il caffè? - Me. -> Chi vuole il caffè? - Io. - a one-word answer to who? is still the subject, so it takes io.

Tips

• The ending is the pronoun. Before writing io or noi, ask: is it doing a job? If you could delete it and lose no meaning, delete it.
• Lei = “Your Lordship”. That old feminine title explains everything strange about it: feminine pronoun, third-person verb, used for men too.
• Capital Lei = you; small lei = she. The capital exists precisely because the words are identical.
• voi is the only plural you need. One tu + one Lei still adds up to voi.
• When you are unsure of the register, ask nothing and use Lei - being over-formal is invisible, being over-familiar is not.