100 Mistakes #1 - What's the subject?

I teach English in Barcelona, so I hear sentences like this every day:

This year have increased sales of ice cream by 10%.
Arrives my train at 6am.
Is very difficult the English.

These sentences don't work because in English you need to put the subject before the verb. (The subject is the person or thing that is 'doing' the verb.)

Here they are again with the subject in the right place:

This year, sales of ice cream have increased by 10%.
My train arrives at 6am.
English is very difficult.
(And no, it isn't difficult. You just have to put your sentences in the right order!)

The Queen and Prince Philip want to know
where their subjects are!

The Golden rule: The subject must go before the verb (...unless it's a question or an imperative, or you get so good at English that you know when you can play around.)





So why do Spanish people get this wrong so much?

In Spanish, you can leave out the subject and put it in later. This is probably because Spanish verbs contain more information than English verbs.

Just look at the verbs 'to scream' and 'gritar':

I scream, you scream, he/she/it screams, we scream, you scream, they scream, (we all scream for ice cream!)

Yo grito, tú gritas, él/élla grita, nosotros gritamos, vosotros gritáis, ellos/ellas gritan, (todos pedimos helado a gritos!)

If we take the subjects away from the English examples, we don't have very much information. If we take them away from the Spanish examples, we have nearly all of the information.

In Spanish you can say "Yo vivo en londres", or "Vivo en londres".

You can 'drop' the pronoun if you want, and we still know who you are talking about. 

In English, you have to say "I live in London" not "Live in London"

You cannot 'drop' the pronoun. If you do, we get very confused.

       

Notice that in Spanish, the verb 'vivo' shows that I live in London, but in English, the verb 'live' doesn't tell us anything about who lives there.

So when someone keeps asking "who?", or "what are you talking about?", it's not because they've forgotten that the conversation is about your new boyfriend, it's just that you forgot to say "he"!

We don't have to say precisely what the subject is every time but we need to use a subject pronoun:

           I, you, he, she, it, we, they, this, that

Also, beware of sentences that start with a preposition such as "In 1989..." or "At the swimming pool..."
Just because there's something before the verb, doesn't make it a subject.

At the swimming pool, have started selling ice-creams. 

"Who? Who?"

At the swimming pool, the staff have started selling ice-creams. 

"You don't need to say precisely who. You just need a pronoun!"

At the swimming pool, they've started selling ice-creams!

"Hooray!"

Oh, is interesting!

Oh, that's interesting!       [that = the thing I just said.]

In Spanish, you can do the same, if you want to: "Esto es interesante!"
In English you have no choice.