French Personal Pronouns

The French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, you, and so on) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like English's distinction between him and her, except that French draws this distinction among inanimate nouns as well). They also reflect the role they play in their clause: subject, direct object, indirect object, or other.

The 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.

Read more about French Personal Pronouns:  Overview, Subject Pronouns, Direct-object Pronouns, Indirect-object Pronouns, Reflexive Pronouns, Disjunctive Pronouns, The Pronoun y, The Pronoun en, Clitic Order

Famous quotes containing the words french, personal and/or pronouns:

    There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.
    Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)

    In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
    Edmund Burke (1729–1797)

    In the meantime no sense in bickering about pronouns and other parts of blather.
    Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)