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Permalink Reply by Dunia on May 14, 2008 at 3:59am

(Ellos) son loros habladores

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Permalink Reply by Heidita on May 14, 2008 at 6:17am

Hi HIl, I would make a slight change:

Estos loros hablan mucho.

Estos loros son muy charlatanes. (colloquial)

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Permalink Reply by Hil on May 14, 2008 at 6:47am

is it better to use ellos or estos when talking about birds because ellos means 'they' right? and 'estos' means 'these'...because i am discussing the birds in a speech, would it be weird saying 'these'? I hope that made sense (by the way, thank you for your responses!)

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Permalink Reply by Dunia on May 14, 2008 at 6:58am

As you probably know in Spanish we don't use personal pronouns, so you have to say either: "son loros habladores" or if you are speaking about specific birds: "éstos son loros habladores" (assuming there are parrots that don't speak)
Or: "estos loros son habladores" (they speak a lot)

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Permalink Reply by Eddy on May 14, 2008 at 12:21pm

Hi Hil
I know you now have your answer but for the future if you remember that nouns and adjectives must compliment each other in number and gender.

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Permalink Reply by James on May 14, 2008 at 1:49pm

As Dunia says, the personal pronoun is often omitted in Spanish because that information is contained in the verb conjugation, but to answer your question, you can use ellos for parrots, and even for inanimate objects: Compró unos cuadernos y se puso a escribir en ellos (She bought some notebooks and began writing in them).

However, whenever the subject of the sentence is clear, you can just use the verb: son, hablan, comen, etc., to mean they are, they talk, they eat, etc. To use my notebook example again, we might have the following, in which "they" is omitted.

- ¿De quién son estos cuadernos?
- Son de Bill.

- Whose notebooks are these?
- They are Bill's.

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