The verbs that we use in written or oral communication can be used in the singular or plural. In Spanish there are three people for the singular and three for the plural. In this way the grammatical persons in the singular are I, you, he or she and we, you, they or they for the plural. Therefore, grammatical people are recognized through personal pronouns.
The first person is the one who speaks or acts. Thus, if I say "I speak", "we sing" I am referring to the first person singular and the first person plural. In the second person, an allusion is made to an individual other than oneself, which can be one person or several, for example "you dance" or "you work". In the third person, the pronoun he or she is used in the singular and they or they are in the plural, for example "they draw" or "he has fun."
Non-personal forms of verbs
There are verbs that are not related to a grammatical person and are the non-personal forms of the verb, which are the infinitive, the gerund and the participle. The infinitive in Spanish has three possible endings, in ar, in er or in ir, such as the verb to love, the verb to bring or the verb to leave. The gerund incorporates the ending going or going, as loving, going out or parting.
The participle ends in adored or gone, like loved or gone, but it must be taken into account that some participles are irregular, like put or seen. These three forms are called non-personal because they do not have personal pronouns before them.
The use of the first and third person in literary texts
When it is written in the first person, the narrator tells something from his personal point of view. Thus, if I say "I saw the thief leave the establishment and I could not avoid staring at his face" I am telling an event that has happened to me and I write it in the first person, because I am the witness of something that has happened. The first-person narrator describes reality from the first person singular or I or from the first person plural or we-as.
When writing in the third person, the narrator becomes omniscient, that is, he knows the whole reality of a matter
An omniscient narrator would say "a young man was coming down the ladder and suddenly he slipped and fell". The third person narrator describes something from him or her in the singular or they or they in the plural.
It should be noted that the figure of the omniscient narrator even knows the feelings of the characters he is describing. The third-person narration can also be considered from the perspective of an objective narrator, that is, one who observes what he sees from outside the story in an objective way, but does not know what the characters he describes think or feel.
Photos: Fotolia - aletia2011 / kurapatka
