Often when we are speaking and writing in Italian, we drop the pronoun/subject, hence the label drop language. You can find more details about pronouns in this post. In fact, even without pronouns, we can understand who’s performing an action by looking at the verb… or more precisely, its ending and the meaning it conveys (i.e. conjugation)… and by considering the context. In Italian, this phenomenon is called anafora. The pronoun can be dropped only if that causes no confusion as to who or what is performing the action. Otherwise, the pronoun should be used. And even when clear, we can still use the pronoun for emphasis. Let’s see a simple example.

IT: Stai mangiando la pizza? Ha un aspetto delizioso

EN: Are you eating pizza? It looks delicious

In the example above, stai mangiando is are you eating in proper English; la pizza, well, it doesn’t need an introduction! In the English translation, I had to add the pronoun YOU to be grammatically correct. But if literally translated, the Italian version would read are eating. You is dropped because STAI is the only conjugation/form of the verb stare used for you (when referring to a single person). So, no misunderstandings! The same applies to the second sentence. Ha un aspetto means it looks, and delizioso is delicious. No pronoun is used here to refer to pizza, whereas in English we need to add – IT. A literal translation would read looks delicious. Odd or even amusing in English, but common in Italian.