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:
“... the French know that you must not succeed you must rise from the ashes and how could you rise from the ashes if there were no ashes, but the Germans never think of ashes and so when there are ashes there is no rising, not at all and every day and in every way this is clearer and clearer.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“In the meantime no sense in bickering about pronouns and other parts of blather.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)