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In English, if someone asks, for example

Who is here?

one can respond with an object pronoun, like “me”, “her”, “us”, etc.

In Spanish, if someone asks

¿Quién está aquí?

One can say “Yo estoy aquí” in response. However, if there’s a really long question, e.g.

¿Quién está muy alegre y quiere tocar el piano al medio día?

this form of response is weird—one would never say “I am very happy and want to play the piano at noon” in response in English. They would just say “me.”

How can I respond? Could I say “me?” If I don’t want to say the full “Yo estoy aquí”, what is the short way to respond to this question, if there is one?

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    In Spanish you can also respond with an object pronoun, like “yo”, “ella”, “nosotros”, etc, there might be cases in which it can be confusing using only the pronoun, but the same happens on English I guess, so just keep it simple, Spanish is weird enough but sometimes it's simple.
    – Castiblanco
    Sep 24, 2019 at 17:01
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    @Castiblanco those listed at the beginning are subject, not object.
    – Stormblessed
    Sep 24, 2019 at 18:03
  • Who's here? Answer: I am. non-standard: me. Your Spanish question is a compound sentence just like the English one. Both require two clauses.
    – Lambie
    Sep 30, 2019 at 18:15

4 Answers 4

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English is, I believe, somewhat odd in allowing the oblique pronouns in the responses like that (but that's actually evidence for them being the default, and the subject pronouns being the exception, which is the reverse of conventional wisdom).

In Spanish, you can just use yo, or tú or whatever else you would use in front of the verb(s).

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  • Wow, people on Spanish are so fast at answering :P I could never do that with English. Thanks!
    – Stormblessed
    Sep 24, 2019 at 3:34
  • Re: "evidence for [the oblique pronouns] being the default, and the subject pronouns being the exception, which is the reverse of conventional wisdom": I don't think that's the reverse of any conventional wisdom. Traditional prescriptive grammar claims that there's no default -- that a certain set of contexts use subject pronouns, a certain set use object (oblique) pronouns, and a certain set use possessive pronouns. Anyone who says that there is a default will say that it's the object pronouns.
    – ruakh
    Sep 24, 2019 at 22:20
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Sometimes the short answer is Yo (or a name or other pronoun). However, sometimes it's a simple sentence:

Q: ¿Quién llegó?
A: Soy yo.

Q: ¿Quién sacó la sandía del refri?
A: Yo fui / Fui yo.

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3

In both cases: "¿Quién está aquí?" and "¿Quién está muy alegre y quiere tocar el piano al medio día?", the shortest answer could be "Yo". It's correct.

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    – mdewey
    Sep 24, 2019 at 15:01
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    @mdewey That's odd. All other SE sites I've seen try hard to get people to stop putting answers in comments, even if they're short. It subverts the voting mechanism since it forces their answer to be above all others and can't be downvoted, so moderators delete them even if they have many votes. As I understand it, comments on the question should only be to ask clarifications or otherwise suggest improvements to the question.
    – JoL
    Sep 24, 2019 at 16:33
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    Both the existing answers have already suggested saying Yo as an acceptable answer so this seemed redundant to me. Do you want to expand it so it is clearly different from them? Or upvote the one which best fits your view?
    – mdewey
    Sep 24, 2019 at 16:37
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    I agree with @mdewey and I wonder why this answer got three upvotes.
    – aparente001
    Sep 25, 2019 at 6:17
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In Spanish, "quién" ("who") questions can be shortly responded, both positively and negatively, using the personal pronouns:

  • yo, yo no
  • tú, tú no
  • vos, vos no
  • usted, usted no
  • él, él no
  • ella, ella no
  • nosotros, nosotros no
  • nosotras, nosotras no
  • vosotros, vosotros no
  • vosotras, vosotras no
  • ustedes, ustedes no
  • ellos, ellos no
  • ellas, ellas no

Also, you can use other counting nouns like:

  • todos
  • nadie

There's a difference in English where you can say, for example:

—Who wants pizza?
—Me! // —I do!

But In Spanish "I" and "me" both translate to "yo" in this context, and giving the long answer you would need to specify what is being asked (wants):

—¿Quién quiere pizza? —¡Yo! // —¡Yo quiero!

Other examples:

—¿Quién fue?
—Yo. // —Yo fui. (For this case "Fui yo" also works.)

—¿Quién compró?
—Yo. // —Yo compré.

—¿Quién lo hizo?
—Yo. // —Yo lo hice.

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    It’d be “who wants pizza”, with no apostrophe (can’t edit because it’s too small). Thanks!
    – Stormblessed
    Sep 28, 2019 at 6:49
  • I like this alternative take on the question. I think you could strengthen the answer with a tiny bit more proofreading and also adding the option ¿Quién quiere pizza? ¡Yo sí!
    – aparente001
    Sep 30, 2019 at 3:29

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