French personal pronouns


French personal pronouns reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well. 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

The second person

French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms.
The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. The pronoun tu is informal and singular, spoken to an individual who is equal or junior to the speaker. The pronoun vous is used in the singular to speak to an individual who is senior to the speaker or socially "more important" than the speaker. Vous 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:
When the predicate is être plus a noun phrase, the pronoun is normally used instead of the other third person subject pronouns. For example, « C'est un homme intelligent », « Ce sont mes parents ». Ce is primarily used as a "neuter" pronoun to refer to events and situations: « J'ai vu Jean hier. C'était amusant. », "I saw John yesterday. It was fun."
Another "neuter" pronoun is il when used as the "dummy subject" of an impersonal verb, like English it in the same context: Il pleut, il neige, il grêle, il vente, il faut que …, etc.
Neologisms such as , ille, ul, ol and yul have emerged in recent years as gender-neutral alternatives to the masculine and feminine pronouns, but are not yet considered standard in French despite their use in some speech communities. Iel 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 takes third-person singular verb forms in the same way that il and elle do, and is used:
  • In the same way as English one, you, and they, where the subject is generalised or otherwise unclear or unimportant:
  • As an extension of the above, it is often used to avoid the passive voice in French:
  • To replace the subject pronoun nous in informal speech. In this case, on takes plural adjectives, even though it always takes a third-person singular verb. The corresponding reflexive object pronoun, se, is also third-person, but first-person possessive pronouns must be used when on meaning nous is the antecedent. The associated disjunctive pronoun in this context is nous.
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 :
On has limited pronoun forms: it has only a reflexive form, se, and a disjunctive form soi. The pronoun quelqu'un can sometimes be used to fill the roles of on:

Direct-object pronouns

Like the English him, her, it, and them, the pronouns le, la, and les are only used with direct objects. For ones, en is used; see, below.
Le, la, and les are not used when the direct object refers to the same entity as the subject; see, below.
Examples:
  • I am giving it to the teacher. « Je le donne au prof. »
  • Have you seen her? « Est-ce que tu '''l

Indirect-object pronouns

In French, an indirect object is an object of a verb that is introduced using a preposition. For example, in the sentence « J'ai parlé à Jean », Jean is the indirect object in the French sentence.
Indirect-object pronouns generally only replace indirect objects with the preposition à. When an indirect object pronoun is used, it replaces the entire prepositional phrase; for example, « Je lui ai donné un livre ».
Broadly speaking, lui and leur are used to refer to people, and y is used to refer to things. However, lui and leur will sometimes also be used in referring to things.
Lui, leur, and y are replaced with se 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 de rather than à; but see, below.
  • Some verbs are incompatible with indirect object pronouns, such as penser and all reflexive verbs. For example, one says, « Je me fie à lui », « * Je me lui fie ».

Reflexive pronouns

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:
  1. Verbs that are inherently reflexive. For example, the verb se souvenir has no non-reflexive counterpart; the verb souvenir has no meaning on its own.
  2. Verbs whose direct or indirect objects refer to the same entities as their subjects. For example, « Je m'achèterai cela » is just a special case of « Je lui achèterai cela » that happens to be reflexive.
  3. Verbs indicating reciprocal actions. For example, « Ils se parlent » means "They are talking to each other." In cases of possible ambiguity, the reciprocal interpretation can be reinforced by adding « Ils se parlent l'un à l'autre ».
  4. Verbs indicating a passive action. For example, one might say, « La porte s'ouvre », 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

Disjunctive pronouns are the strong forms of French pronouns, the forms used in isolation and in emphatic positions.
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".
  • as emphatic subjects : « Lui sait le faire », "He knows how to do it".
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

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 ? Peut-être est-il déjà trop tard.
  • ''« C'en est assez ! » s'exclama-t-il.''

Enclitic object pronouns

Forms that deviate from their proclitic equivalents and irregular or noteworthy pronunciations are highlited in bold.
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. »
  • : « Est-ce que tu travailles dans ce bureau ? — Non, je ny travaille plus. »
  • It is used idiomatically with certain verbs, without replacing anything:
  • : « Il doit y avoir une erreur. »
  • : « Je commence à y voir un peu plus clair. »

The pronoun ''en''

The pronoun en has the following uses:
  • It is the indirect-object pronoun used with things introduced by the preposition de. It is also sometimes used in the same way with people.:
  • :« Je parle du problème. » → « Jen parle. »
  • :« Je parle de Jean. » → « Jen parle. » or « Je parle de lui. »
  • It is used to replace a spatial prepositional phrase introduced by de. In this sense, it might be translated as from there:
  • :« Je viens de France. » → « Jen viens. »
  • It is the direct-object pronoun used to replace indefinite direct objects; that is, direct objects that are:
  • *introduced by the partitive article
  • *:« Jai bu du jus de pomme. » → « Jen ai bu. »
  • *introduced by de when the verb is negated
  • *:« Je n'ai pas vu de vaches. » → Je n'en ai pas vu.
  • *introduced by a numeral or a plural expression
  • *:« J'ai mangé une pomme. » → « Jen ai mangé une. »
  • *:« J'ai mangé quelques pommes. » → Jen ai mangé quelques-unes.
  • *introduced by another expression of quantity
  • *:« J'ai vendu beaucoup de jus de pomme. » → « Jen ai vendu beaucoup. »
  • *:« J'ai acheté trois kilogrammes de pommes. » → « Jen ai acheté trois kilogrammes. »
  • It is used idiomatically with certain verbs, without replacing anything:
  • :« J'en veux à Jean. »
  • :« Je vais en finir avec lui. »

Clitic order

French personal pronouns, aside from their disjunctive forms, are all clitics, and the order of pronominal clitics as well as the negative clitic ne is strictly determined as follows. Only one clitic can be used for each slot. Where one wishes to express an idea that would involve slots that cannot coexist or multiple pronouns from the same slot, the indirect object is expressed as the object of à or pour. The use of more than two clitics beyond the subject and, where necessary, ne is uncommon; constructions such as Je lui y en ai donné may be perceived as unacceptable, and other constructions must then be used to express the same ideas.
;Proclitic order: Slots 3 and 5 cannot coexist.
;Enclitic order: Used only for positive imperatives. Slots 2 and 3 cannot coexist.
  1. The clitics -moi and -toi become -m' and -t' respectively when followed by either -en or -y. In colloquial French, however, it is possible to keep -moi and -toi intact and change -en and -y to -z-en and -z-y respectively, or to put slot 5 before slot 3, or less commonly, before slot 1 or 2.
  2. :ex. The imperative sentences corresponding to « Tu m'en donnes »:
  3. :« Donne-m'en. »
  4. :« Donne-moi-z-en. »
  5. :« Donnes-en-moi. »