French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, you, he/she, we, they, etc.) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like the English distinction between him and her, except that French lacks an inanimate third person pronoun it or a gender neutral they and thus draws this distinction among all third person nouns, singular and plural). They also reflect the role they play in their clause: subject, direct object, indirect object, or other.
Personal pronouns display a number of grammatical particularities and complications not found in their English counterparts: some of them can only be used in certain circumstances; some of them change form depending on surrounding words; and their placement is largely unrelated to the placement of the nouns they replace.
Overview
+French personal pronouns Function Person Number Subject Reflexive Direct object Indirect object DisjunctiveDisjunctive reflexiveGenitive 1st Singular -Plural (colloquial) Plural (formal) 2ndSingular (informal) Singular (formal) Plural 3rdSingular / - -Plural /
The second person
French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: and and their various forms.
The usage of and depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. The pronoun is informal and singular, spoken to an individual who is equal or junior to the speaker. The pronoun is used in the singular (but with second-person plural verb forms) to speak to an individual who is senior to the speaker or socially "more important" than the speaker. is also used in the plural for all groups of people, whether junior, equal or senior.
Subject pronouns
As noted above, the personal pronouns change form to reflect the role they play in their clause. The forms used for subjects are called the subject pronouns, subjective pronouns, or nominative pronouns. They are as follows:
singular plural first personinformal formal second person informal formal third person masculine feminine
When the predicate is () plus a noun phrase, the pronoun ( in elision contexts) is normally used instead of the other third person subject pronouns. For example, ("He is a smart man"), ("Those are my parents"). is primarily used as a "neuter" pronoun to refer to events and situations: , "I saw John yesterday. It was fun."
Another "neuter" pronoun is when used as the "dummy subject" of an impersonal verb, like English it in the same context: , , , , , etc.
Neologisms such as (), , , and have emerged in recent years as gender-neutral alternatives to the masculine and feminine pronouns, but are not yet considered standard in French"Nonbinary pronoun 'they' sparks French language debate". The Connexion, December 11, 2019. despite their use in some speech communities.Knisely, Kris A. Le français non-binaire: Linguistic forms used by non-binary speakers of French. Foreign Language Annals. 2020;53:850–876.https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12500876 (plural ) is the most widely-known and used gender-neutral pronoun.
The third person plural is masculine () when a group contains both males and females or masculine and feminine nouns.
On
The subject pronoun (from Old French , from Latin ) takes third-person singular verb forms in the same way that and do, and is used:
In the same way as English one, you, and they, where the subject is generalised or otherwise unclear or unimportant: "It is by blacksmithing that one becomes a blacksmith." "to think that you are right," i.e. "to think oneself right." As an extension of the above, it is often used to avoid the passive voice in French: "[Someone] gave it to me." In English, it would be more common to say, "It was given to me.", which would be rendered as in French. To replace the subject pronoun in informal speech. In this case, takes plural adjectives, even though it always takes a third-person singular verb. The corresponding reflexive object pronoun, , is also third-person, but first-person possessive pronouns must be used when meaning is the antecedent. The associated disjunctive pronoun in this context is . "We are about to go." "Us, we are American, and you, you are French." "Shall we get rid of our luggage?"
+Colloquial replacement of by Function Number Person Subject Reflexive Direct object Indirect object Disjunctive Plural 1st formal informal
It is used for the number one, or as in one of them. As in English, numbers can be used as pronouns, and this is also true of the French word (): "Two went in and one came back out."
has limited pronoun forms: it has only a reflexive form, , and a disjunctive form (which is also only used when the sense is reflexive). The pronoun () can sometimes be used to fill the roles of : "Someone told me..."
Direct-object pronouns
Like the English him, her, it, and them, the pronouns , , and are only used with direct objects. For ones (e.g., "some juice"), is used; see , below.
singular plural first person second person informal formal third person masculine feminine
, , and are not used when the direct object refers to the same entity as the subject; see , below.
Examples: (I have a book.) I am giving it to the teacher. (Danielle is my sister.) Have you seen her?
Indirect-object pronouns
singular plural first person second person informal formal third person
In French, an indirect object is an object of a verb that is introduced using a preposition (especially the preposition ). For example, in the sentence ("I spoke to Jean"), is the indirect object in the French sentence.
Indirect-object pronouns (or dative pronouns) generally only replace indirect objects with the preposition . When an indirect object pronoun is used, it replaces the entire prepositional phrase; for example, ("I gave him a book").
Broadly speaking, and are used to refer to people, and (see , below) is used to refer to things. However, and will sometimes also be used in referring to things.
, , and are replaced with ( before a vowel) when the indirect object refers to the same entity as the subject; see , below.
As mentioned above, the indirect object pronouns are not always used to replace indirect objects: They are not used when the preposition is rather than ; but see , below. Some verbs are incompatible with indirect object pronouns, such as () and all reflexive verbs. For example, one says, ("I put my trust in him"), .
Reflexive pronouns
singular plural first person second person informal formal third person
In French, as in English, reflexive pronouns are used in place of direct- and indirect-object pronouns that refer to the same entity or entities as the subject. A verb with a reflexive pronoun is called a reflexive verb, and has many grammatical particularities aside from the choice of pronoun; see French verbs.
There are four kinds of reflexive verbs: Verbs that are inherently reflexive. For example, the verb () has no non-reflexive counterpart; the verb has no meaning on its own. Verbs whose direct or indirect objects refer to the same entities as their subjects. For example, ("I shall buy myself that") is just a special case of ("I shall buy him that") that happens to be reflexive. Verbs indicating reciprocal actions. For example, means "They are talking to each other." In cases of possible ambiguity, the reciprocal interpretation can be reinforced by adding . Verbs indicating a passive action. For example, one might say, , which literally means, "The door is opening itself," but really means, "The door is opening." All four kinds use the reflexive pronouns, and exhibit the grammatical particularities of reflexive verbs.
Disjunctive pronouns
singular plural first person moi nous second person informal toi vous formal vous third person masculine lui eux feminine elle elles
Disjunctive pronouns are the strong forms of French pronouns, the forms used in isolation and in emphatic positions (compare the use of me in the English sentence "Me, I believe you, but I am not sure anyone else will"; for more, see Intensive pronoun).
In French, disjunctive pronouns are used in the following circumstances: as the objects of prepositions: « Je le fais pour toi », "I am doing it for you." in dislocated positions: « Toi, je t'ai déjà vu, moi. », "You, I have seen you before, I have." in cleft sentences: « C'est toi qui as tort », "It is you who are wrong." lit. "It is you who have error/wrong." in compound noun phrases: « Lui et moi sommes américains », "He and I are American" (though one might equally say, « Lui et moi, nous sommes américains / on est américains »). as emphatic subjects (third person only): « Lui sait le faire », "He knows how to do it" (though one might equally say, « Lui, il sait le faire »).
The reflexive disjunctive form soi can be used as the object of a preposition, if it refers to the same entity as the subject. For example, « Un voyageur sait se sentir chez soi n'importe où », "A traveller knows how to feel at home anywhere." Note that this does not make the verb reflexive.
Enclitic pronouns
While most clitic pronouns precede the verb, two categories of pronouns can be suffixed to it instead : subject pronouns in the case of inversion, and object pronouns of non-negated imperative verbs.
Enclitic pronouns are pronounced together with the verb, causing the word-final stress to retract onto the pronoun, with the exceptions of -je and -ce, which are non-syllabic and merely add a consonant to the final syllable of the preceding verb.
Enclitic subject pronouns
spelling pronunciation first person singular -je /ʒ/, /ɛʒ/ plural -nous /nu/ second person singular -tu /ty/ plural -vous /vu/ third person singular -il, -t-il /til/ -elle, -t-elle /tɛl/ -on, -t-on /tɔ̃/ -ce /s/ plural -ils, -t-ils /til/ -elles, -t-elles /tɛl/
Enclitic subject pronouns are mostly used when forming questions. They are also used after some sentence-initial adverbs and adverbial phrases, and in a handful of other non-interrogative sentence structures : Qui êtes-vous ? (interrogative) Peut-être est-il déjà trop tard. (adverbial phrase "peut-être" causes inversion) « C'en est assez ! » s'exclama-t-il. (inversion after quotation)
Enclitic object pronouns
Forms that deviate from their proclitic equivalents and irregular or noteworthy pronunciations are highlighted in bold.
{| class="wikitable" |- ! colspan=2 | !! Proclitic form !! Enclitic form !! pronunciation |- ! rowspan=2 | first person ! singular | me, m || -moi || /mwa/ |- ! plural | nous || -nous || /nu/ |- ! rowspan=2 | second person ! singular | te, t || -toi || /twa/ |- ! plural | vous || -vous || /vu/ |- ! rowspan=7 | third person ! rowspan=5 | singular | le, l ||-le || /lø/''' |- | la, l || -la || /la/ |- | lui || -lui || /lɥi/ |- | y || -y || /zi/|- | en || -en || /zɑ̃/|- ! rowspan=2 | plural | les || -les || /le/ |- | leur || -leur || /lœʁ/
Enclitic object pronouns are exclusively used after imperative verbs : when the imperative is negated, proclitic forms are used instead. Vas-y ! - N'y va pas !
The pronoun y
The pronoun y has two distinct uses: It is the indirect-object pronoun used with things introduced by the preposition à. For more on this use, see above. It is used to replace a spatial prepositional phrase. In this sense, it might be translated as there. For example: « Je vais à Paris. » → « Jy vais. » ("I am going to Paris." → "I am going there.") « Est-ce que tu travailles dans ce bureau ? — Non, je ny travaille plus. » ("Do you work in that office? — No, I do not work there anymore.") It is used idiomatically with certain verbs, without replacing anything: « Il doit y avoir une erreur. » ("There must be a mistake.") « Je commence à y voir un peu plus clair. » ("I am starting to see things more clearly.")
The pronoun en