Él or Ello
What's the Spanish version of "it" in English? ( subject pronoun) Is it Él or Ello? What is the difference?
2 Answers
I'm afraid it doesn't work like that Culé.
Él/ella/ello correspond to either he/she/it or him/her/it. The reason why you don't hear 'ello' very often, and why you were wondering which one was the equivalent of 'it', is because 'ello' is the neutral pronoun, and in Spanish nouns always have a gender. Whenever you replace a noun with a pronoun, you need to do so according to its gender (él/ella), so 'ello' is almost never used in that role. The only moments when you say 'ello', are when you use 'it' in a figurative sense . For example in "It caused a lot of problems" or "I wouldn't be too worried about it", which in Spanish would be translated as "Ello causó muchos problemas" and "No me preocuparía demasiado por ello". In all other cases you need to say either 'el' or 'ella', no matter if you are talking about a person or a brick.
(in your example, you would have to say "puedes encontrar tus llaves en él", as 'coche' is a masculine word)
Hi, welcome to the forum 
"Él quiere ir contigo." : He wants to go with you.
"Hay un coche verde, puedes encontrar tus llaves en ello" : There is a green car, you can find your keys in it.(When you don't use a relative clause)
Él / Ella : He / She ( Subject Pronouns)
Ello / Ella : it (As far as I know, you cannot use them as a subject pronoun, but a direct object.)
