Ya no me importa el ruido en la calle.

I

Breakdown of Ya no me importa el ruido en la calle.

• en: in
• la calle: the street
• no: not

Questions & Answers about Ya no me importa el ruido en la calle.

What does ya no add to the meaning? How is ya no me importa different from just no me importa?

Ya no literally means no longer / not anymore.

• No me importa el ruido en la calle = I don’t care about / The noise in the street doesn’t matter to me (a neutral statement; maybe you never cared, or we don’t know).
• Ya no me importa el ruido en la calle = I no longer care about / The noise in the street doesn’t matter to me anymore (it used to matter, but now it doesn’t).

So ya no almost always implies a change compared to the past.

Why is it me importa and not yo importo or yo no me importo el ruido?

In Spanish, importar (in the sense used here) works like gustar:

• The thing that matters is the grammatical subject.
• The person it matters to is an indirect object, shown with a pronoun (me, te, le, nos, les).

So:

• El ruido en la calle = subject (the noise)
• me = to me (indirect object)
• importa = matters / is important (3rd person singular, agreeing with el ruido)

The structure is:

[A mí] me importa el ruido en la calle.
= The noise in the street matters to me.

That is why it is me importa and not yo importo.
Yo importo would mean I am important (to someone), which is different.

What exactly is the role of me here? Is it reflexive?