Italian 路 Chapter 2 路 Lesson 8 路 Grammar primer
Subject pronouns, and why you drop them
Io, tu, lui - and then you leave them out, because the verb ending already says who is speaking.
The short version
Drop io: the verb ending already says it
Every person of an Italian verb has its own ending, so parlo can only mean I speak. Adding io to a neutral sentence does not make it clearer, it makes it emphatic, as if you were correcting someone. Leave the pronoun out unless you are contrasting two people.
Parlo inglese.
Italian stresses who by moving the pronoun last
English stresses the subject with the voice. Italian moves the pronoun to the end of the sentence, where the weight falls, so pago io means I will pay, me and nobody else. The same trick gives sono io for it's me, with the verb agreeing with io.
Pago io.
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Lesson 8 of 24 in this chapter