10. Dummy subject

Sometimes a sentence doesn’t have a proper subject. For example, we can say “it’s snowing” without mentioning the clouds where the snow is coming from. In English, sentences like this have a dummy subject, which can be it or there. The dummy subject it is often encountered when talking about the weather:

It is cold.
It rained.

It is also used when talking about time:

Is it Friday already?
It’s six o’clock.

When saying that something or someone is in a particular place, you can use the dummy subject there:

There is food in the fridge.

Compare to:

The food is in the fridge,

referring to a specific, previously mentioned food.

These sentence structures are very common. Using them correctly makes your English sound more fluent.