Spanish Indefinite Pronoun
See also: Pronombre and Pronoun types
Indefinite pronouns refer to people or things without saying exactly who or what they are. They are vague or "not definite" because they do not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. Because they are pronouns, they stand alone; they do not accompany a noun like indefinite adjectives do.
Nadie vino a la reunión.
Nobody came to the meeting
Alguien me llamó por teléfono.
Someone called me on the phone.
No hay nada en la nevera.
There is nothing on the fridge.
Spanish indefinite pronouns are variable indefinite pronouns. This means that they must agree in number and gender with the nouns that they replace, so each of the pronombres indefinidos shown above will have different forms as you can see in the following table:
| Nadie | nobody |
| Alguien | someone |
| Quienquiera | whoever |
| Quienesquiera | whoever (plural) |
| Algo | something |
| Nada | nothing |
Notice that nadie, alguien, quienquiera y quienesquiera refer to a person. While nada and algo always refer to things.
Both of these categories are considered invariable indefinite pronouns: they don't change to agree in gender or number with the noun that they are substituting.
There are some indefinite adjetives that if do not accompany a noun can work as indefinite pronouns. For example:
Todos salieron pronto de trabajar.
Everyone left work early.
No es esta calle es la otra.
It's not this street it's the other one.
Algún día sus sueños se haran realidad.
Someday your dreams will come true.
Have a look at this table with all the cases:
| Todo | every/all |
| Otro | other |
| Poco | a bit/ few |
| Algún | some/ any |
| Ningún | no ...... |
| Mucho | everyone/everybody |
This table shows how these change to agree in gender and number:
| Singular masculine | Singular femenine | Plural masculine | Plural femenine |
| Todo | Toda | Todos | Todas |
| Otro | Otra | Otros | Otras |
| Poco | Poca | Pocos | Pocas |
| Algún | Alguna | Algunos | Algunas |
| Mucho | Mucha | Muchos | Muchas |
