CAPTULO 1

INVENTARIO PERSONAL

Impersonal and passive subjects

I Impersonal se
.
Lets take a look at a sentence like this one:
En Mxico se cena muy tarde.
In Mexico they eat dinner late at night.
or this one:
No es algo que se dice a un camarero.
That's not something you say to a waiter.
or this one:
En los Estados Unidos se suele usar tortillas de harina.
In the US we tend to use flour tortillas.
In these three sentences the subjects they, you, and we do
not refer to specific people but rather to people in general and
therefore are called indefinite or I impersonal subjects.
Whenever you talk to or about an impersonal subject you need to
use the impersonal se construction instead oft, usted,
nosotros or ellos:
se + third-person singular verb + preposition / adverb / verb (any non-noun)
Two rules to remember here:

1. The verb is always singular.

2. With the impersonal se the word directly following the
verb cannot be a noun. If the word following the verb is
a noun, the construction technically becomes
a passive se which is discussed below.

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I Passive voice:
I
. A different way to shift the emphasis in a sentence from the
subject to the action is by using the passive voice. There are two
ways to do this in Spanish.
The first is with ser + past participle + por. English speakers
have a tendency to overuse this structure. Only use this
construction when the sentence states by whom the thing was
done with the word por.
Los tamales son preparados por el chef.
The tamales are prepared by the chef.
The following wording is a better choice in both languages, since
it uses the active voice:
El chef prepara los tamales.
The chef prepares the tamales.
The other and most common way to form the passive voice in
Spanish (when there is no subject listed with por) is with
the passive se construction:
se + third-person singular verb + singular noun
se + third-person plural verb + plural noun
En este restaurante se prepara la comida todos los das.
In this restaurant the food is prepared every day.
En este restaurante se preparan los tamales todos los das.
In this restaurant the tamales are prepared every day.
The passive se and the impersonal se are very important in
writing and speaking, along with helping you sound more natural
in Spanish. Remember: when faced with the passive voice, native
Spanish speakers will use the passive se and so should you.

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Ojo!

Whether or not to use a singular verb in a sentence like

this one can be confusing:
Do you order drinks here or at the bar?
Se piden bebidas aqu o en el bar?
Even though the desired subject (you) is impersonal, the
sentence requires a plural verb and thus a
passive se construction because a plural noun directly
follows the verb.

Since there is often no direct equivalent in English to

the se constructions, they are often translated as either
the passive se or the impersonal se:
Se habla espaol.

Spanish is spoken.

Se habla espaol.

One speaks (We speak) Spanish.

This makes it especially hard to tell which construction is

which. Besides whether or not they are followed by a
noun, another rule of thumb for telling the
constructions apart is that the subject of
the impersonal se is usually human (singular and
masculine), and the subject of the passivese is usually
non-human and agrees with the verb in number:
Impersonal se
Se puede pedir sangra y tapas aqu.
You can order sangra and tapas here.
(human subject)

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Passive se
Se piden las bebidas en el bar.
Drinks are ordered at the bar.
(non-human subject that agrees in number with the verb)

As we shall see below, se constructions are especially

useful when circumlocuting, or describing in a roundabout
way:
Es algo que se encuentra fuera de una casa.
Es donde se ven las palabras en la computadora.

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