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:

    “Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!”
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

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