1. Subject pronouns.

In French, much like in English, subject pronouns are short words that allow us to say who does the action. They are particularly useful when we don't want to repeat the name of a person:

• "James came to the party last night. James brought some wine."

It is a lot more idiomatic to replace the second James by "He".

• "James came to the party last night. He brought some wine."

Naturally, it is even more useful with "we", "they" and the plural "you". We don't want to repeat the whole list of people!

Here are the subject pronouns, with their English translation:

Je	I
Tu	You
Il	He
Elle	She
Nous	We
Vous	You (plural)
Ils group of men only OR both men and women	They
Elles group of women only	They

Please note three things:

            1. The French do NOT pronounce the "s" at the end of words. EVER. So "il/elle" and "ils/elles" have the same pronunciation. The context is always self-explanatory.

            2. Though "the masculine gender always wins" in grammatical and vocabulary conflicts in French*, the language does provide a female-only pronoun when it comes to groups of people.

 

If there are only men at your party	If there are both men and women at your party	If there are only women at your party
ILS	ILS	ELLES
"Ils sont cool."	"Ils sont cool."	"Elles sont cool."

* Unfortunately, this is not a gender-equal system: if there are 100 women and 1 man at your party, grammatically you should still use "ils".

3. The "I" pronoun "je" becomes "j' " in front of words that start with a vowel OR the letter "h".

"Je suis américain."

BUT

"J'arrive à 16h31. J'habite à Paris."

In French, the vowels are A, E, I, O, U and Y. 

2. Object pronouns.

Object pronouns are the short words you use to avoid a repetition of the name of the person: who does the subject do the action to?

"James me téléphone."                                "James calls me."

As you can see, French object pronouns go BEFORE the verb.

It is very important to know that in French there are DIRECT pronouns and INDIRECT pronouns, and they have different forms. To make this easy on yourself, look if the French verb is introduced by the preposition "à". If it is "à Laura", you know it's indirect. If there isn't anything, it's direct. Check these out:

2.1 DIRECT object pronouns:

• I see James. I see him.
  Je vois James. Je le vois.
• I watch TV. I watch it every day.
  Je regarde la télé. Je la regarde tous les jours.
• I call you guys tomorrow.
  Je vous appelle demain.

 

SINGULAR	me you him her     it	me te le la   le OR la depending on the gender of the thing/object.
PLURAL	us you them	nous vous les

2.2 INDIRECT object pronouns

Can you see the "à"?

• I give the book to the teacher. I give her the book ("to her").
  Je donne le livre à la prof. Je lui donne le livre.
• I write to Suzanne. I write her ("to her").
  J'écris à Suzanne. Je lui écris.
• I ask Thomas. I ask him ("to him").
  Je demande à Thomas. Je lui demande.

 

SINGULAR	me you him her it	me te lui lui lui
PLURAL	us you them	nous vous leur

Note that in both cases, the English use the same set of pronouns!

Also note that the vowel rule applies here too. Use the apostrophe " ' ".

Je te demande.

BUT

Je t'appelle.

That's it for today, well done!

Put it into practice!

As soon as you start expressing yourself in French, you'll need those! You can practice here:

- I see the chairs in the garden. (them)      - I send the document tonight. (it)

- I know the lesson. (it)                                - You tell us the good news. (us)

- I speak to James. (him)                              - She listens to the song on the bus. (it)                

In the next level, we will learn how to combine these pronouns! 

 

 

Some other stuff here