French Pronouns - Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

French has a complex system of personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, they, and so on). When compared to English, the particularities of French personal pronouns include:

  • a T-V distinction in the second person singular (familiar tu vs. polite vous)
  • the placement of object pronouns before the verb: « Agnès les voit. » ("Agnès sees them.")
  • the existence of distinct pronouns for indirect objects and for certain prepositional objects
  • the use of a distinct disjunctive form, e.g. for emphasis (moi, toi, etc.).

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Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or pronouns:

    “The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

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