Today is not... / Today it is not...

Question

¡Hola! Gracias por ayudarme. Haciendo un test on-line el programa me marcó un error cuando me pidió traducir al inglés:

• Hoy no va a llover

Yo escribí:

• Today is not going to rain

El programa me corrigió:

• Today it is not going to rain

¿Por qué se necesita "it"?

Answer 1

In English the pronouns are required while in Spanish they are often implied by the conjugations. Without the "it" the sentence lacks a subject in English.

Thank you. I thought that "today" would work as a subject! - maestroantonio, Aug 13, 2013

Answer 2

Hoy va a llover / Today it is going to rain.

In both languages hoy/today does not do the action of raining but some abstract thing does it, ie: the atmosphere, the sky, the rain god, etc. Therefore we use it in English but in Spanish this word is not mentioned because the verb is already conjugated for it. Hoy/today is not the subject.

Answer 3

How did I miss your post, old friend? Anytime you need personal help in English feel free to send me a PM on this site.

We do use the verb to rain in the 3rd person singular of all the tenses. The future using to go would be It is going to rain, today. or It's going to rain, today so the negative would be It is not going to rain today. or It's not going to rain today.

That is the simplest explanation I can think of for your question.

Cuídate, y bendiciones!

Answer 4

It just does.

Sadly maestroantonio, I will probably never, ever fully understand the subjunctive, I just accept it's necessary.

So it is with ' it'. We need it!

Actually, if not using ''it'', the sentence is incomprehensible, becaue ' today' becomes the active part and cannot rain all by itself..

Answer 5

Yes, in this case, the 'it is very much needed'

I think this one is hard to get just right initially for Spanish speakers for two reasons,

1) as mentioned, we have to have a subject in almost every case for English. In this case, we use the abstract neutral pronoun, 'it'

2) this particular word doesn't really exist in Spanish, so unlike say, he/she él/ella, where a Spanish speaker can fairly readily get used to explicitly stating a word they normally just imply, but it's harder to get used to a word you don't even exactly have, 'it'

This works in reverse too. i.e I personally really really wanted the word 'it' to exist in Spanish, and it really felt weird not to have it at first. It took a while to let go.

Anyway, I hope maybe that adds a tiny bit to the many good explanations you've already received.

You just have to have it.

Now, about that personal 'a' ...