él

Él, with an accent on the first syllable, is the Spanish personal pronoun used for the third person singular masculine. It functions as a subject pronoun, referring to a male who is the topic of the sentence, as in Él estudia matemáticas. It can also appear as an emphasized or contrastive pronoun to highlight the subject, as in No quiero que venga, pero Él sí.

Origin and distinction from other words: Él derives from Latin ille, the same root that contributed to the definite article el in Spanish. The accent mark (tilde) on él is a diacritic used to distinguish the pronoun from the definite article el, which does not carry an accent when it precedes a noun (el libro). The accent is required in standard modern Spanish to avoid ambiguity between the pronoun and the determiner.

Usage and grammar: As a subject pronoun, Él agrees in number and gender with the noun it replaces or refers to and does not change form for case. It can appear with verbs in any tense: Él fue, Él es, Él será. It also appears after prepositions as a disjunct pronoun, such as a Él, para Él, or contigo y para Él. In written Spanish, using Él to emphasize the subject is common in narrative and discourse.

Variants and related forms: The corresponding object or indirect object forms are different words (lo, le, etc.), and Spanish maintains separate pronouns for disambiguation. While pronouns may be capitalized at the start of a sentence, the accent in Él remains orthographically distinct from the definite article. In modern usage, Él is treated as a standard pronoun across dialects of Spanish.