A Beginners Guide To French Pronouns

Let’s be honest, learning about pronouns is one of those really boring grammar topics, but we really do need to know this information, so don’t ignore it.

I will try and explain it as simply as possible and try and keep away from just endless lists and tables.

The world of pronouns can get a bit deep and maybe a little confusing at times.

I want to just give you the real basics here, so this will not be the full works, but enough to give a beginner what they need.

What Is A Pronoun In English?

Before we start trying to learn what they are in French, we need to understand what they are in English.

Very simply put, they are words that replace nouns/names when you are referring to people/things.

If we look at this sentence.

“Steve has a new car. Steve bought the car for £300.”

We wouldn’t talk like this. We would probably say

“Steve has a new car. He Bought it for £300.”    

As you can see we replaced some words to make it sound more natural.

In the first sentence we mentioned who/what we were talking about. In the second sentence, we could replaced Steve (a name) and the car (a noun) as it was clear who/what we where referring to.

There was no need to repeat these nouns/names over and over again as. It would just sound kind of robotic to talk like that.

The words we add in their place are pronouns.

There are lots of different types of pronouns and at certain times you need to use certain ones, but let’s not get too caught up with that now.

Just to give you an idea of how many different types there is I will list them here. There are two main groups of pronouns. Personal and Impersonal

Personal Pronouns:

• Subject
• Reflexive
• Direct Object
• Indirect Object
• Prepositional

Impersonal Pronouns:

• Adverbial
• Demonstrative
• Subject
• Indefinite Demonstrative
• Indefinite
• Interrogative
• Negative
• Possessive
• Relative
• Indefinite Relative

So as you can see. There are a lot of different types of pronouns, but do not let this worry you.

Today we will only be looking at the Personal Subject Pronouns.

This is more than enough to start with and is a very solid foundation for the French language. As you progress you can start to learn about the other types.

What Are Subject Pronouns?

These are the most simplest and you will see them constantly in French and they work exactly how they do in English.

These are to be used when we are talking about a person/thing (a subject) that is doing something (a verb).

If we look at how verbs work, they all need a subject for them to make sense.

To walk, sing, eat, dance…. they all get done by someone/something and as explained above, pronouns are just words that can take the place of someone/something in a sentence.

Instead of saying “Steve dances”… we can say “he dances”.

The French Subject Pronouns

lets look at the main subject pronouns you will see in French:

Je – I

This is how you talk about yourself. You are normally going to say “I walked, I sang” etc. You would sound very crazy to talk about yourself by referring to yourself with your own name, so using this pronoun is going to be happen a lot.

When the verb following this pronoun starts with a vowel or an H, the Je will get shorted to J’ and will be added to the verb. ( j’ai or j’habite).

This just looks and sounds nicer than je ai or je habite.

It’s just a little rule to be aware of. This is a common mistake made by beginners and can also confuse you when you see it written like this.

Tu – You

This is the singular version of you. So when you are directly talking to someone else and you refer to them directly. “Do YOU want a cup of tea?”

Il/Elle/On – He/She/We/ (also It)

Il and Elle are the direct translation of he and she, but can also mean “it” as well.

This is where it is easy to get confused. Inanimate objects in French have a gender.

In English, if we wanted to talk about a table, we would just say “it is big”. In French, a table is feminine, so you would say “elle est grand”.  The elle here means, IT, but to us, it looks like it means “She is big.” which can seem a little strange when you are talking about a table.

You will also notice this if you hear French people speaking English. They will randomly refer to inanimate objects as he/she in this same way when they are talking in English.

It’s really weird at first, but you kind of get used to it after a while. It is also why it is important to learn an objects gender, so you can give it the right pronoun. If you said elle instead of il, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, you would still be understood, you might just look a bit silly.

“On” is also slightly strange. It is referring to “We”, in the same way that “Nous” does, but it is very informal.

If you want to informally use a verb saying ‘We’, you can use ‘On’ and treat the verb ending as if you where using il/elle.

Nous – We

This is a plural of subjects, talking about a group of people, including yourself. As above, if you where with close friends and wanted to be informal, you can use On.

Vous – You

This is a plural of subjects, talking about a group that does not include yourself.

Then to make things confusing, you use this when you are being polite or formal to refer to just one person. If you met a stranger, you would not say TU …you would say VOUS.

We do not have this in English. We would just say “do YOU want a cup of tea?”

In French it’s “do TU want a cup of tea” for your friends and “do VOUS want a cup of tea” when being formal and polite to strangers.

Ils/Elles – They

This is the plural of subjects, meaning ‘They’.

Ils is for a group of masculine subjects.

It is also used for mixed gender groups. Even if there is 1 million female subjects, the second there is one male in the group, the whole groups becomes Ils.

Weird, I know, but that’s the grammar rules!

Elles is for a group of female subjects.

Both Ils and Elles are pronounced the same as Il and elle. The S is silent.

It sounds confusing, but the verb itself with sound different, so you can tell if you are referring to the singular “he/she” or the plural “they”  

Conclusion

These subject pronouns are everywhere in French, You will always seem them listed out along with the verb and their ending for each subject.

This is because the spelling of the verb will change ever so slightly for each pronoun. They usually have a slightly different ending to the word, depending on what subject you are talking about.

This is conjugation and a topic for another day. Basically you need to learn these pronouns inside out and you will quickly learn the corresponding verb endings that match them.

(Read the next lesson – An Introduction To French Verbs)