French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, you, he/she, we, and they) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like the English distinction between him and her, except that French lacks an inanimate third person pronoun it or a gender neutral they and thus draws this distinction among all third person nouns, singular and plural). They also reflect the role they play in their clause: subject, direct object, indirect object, or other. 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.

Overview

The second person

French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. The pronoun tu is informal and singular, spoken to an individual who is equal or junior to the speaker. The pronoun vous is used in the singular (but with second-person plural verb forms) to speak to an individual who is senior to the speaker or socially "more important" than the speaker. Vous is also used in the plural for all groups of people, whether junior, equal or senior.

Subject pronouns

As noted above, the personal pronouns change form to reflect the role they play in their clause. The forms used for subjects are called the subject pronouns, subjective pronouns, or nominative pronouns. They are as follows: When the predicate is être (to be) plus a noun phrase, the pronoun ( in elision contexts) is normally used instead of the other third person subject pronouns. For example, « C'est un homme intelligent » ("He is a smart man"), « Ce sont mes parents » ("Those are my parents"). Ce is primarily used as a "neuter" pronoun to refer to events and situations: « J'ai vu Jean hier. C'était amusant. », "I saw John yesterday. It was fun." Neologisms such as , ille, ul, ol and yul have emerged in recent years as gender-neutral alternatives to the masculine and feminine pronouns, but are not yet considered standard in French despite their use in some speech communities. Iel (plural ) is the most widely-known and used gender-neutral pronoun. The third person plural is masculine (ils) when a group contains both males and females or masculine and feminine nouns. This grammar rule is sometimes considered sexist. To erase sexism, a neutral plural pronoun such as iels can be used by some French people.

On

The subject pronoun (from Old French [h]om, homme man, from Latin human being) takes third-person singular verb forms in the same way that il and elle do, and is used: It is used for the number one, or as in one of them. As in English, numbers can be used as pronouns, and this is also true of the French word : On has limited pronoun forms: it has only a reflexive form, se, and a disjunctive form soi (which is also only used when the sense is reflexive). The pronoun quelqu'un (someone) can sometimes be used to fill the roles of on:

Direct-object pronouns

Like the English him, her, it, and them, the pronouns le, la, and les are only used with direct objects. For ones (e.g., "some juice"), en is used; see, below. Le, la, and les are not used when the direct object refers to the same entity as the subject; see, below. Examples:

Indirect-object pronouns

In French, an indirect object is an object of a verb that is introduced using a preposition (especially the preposition à). For example, in the sentence « J'ai parlé à Jean » ("I spoke to Jean"), Jean is the indirect object in the French sentence. Indirect-object pronouns (or dative pronouns) generally only replace indirect objects with the preposition à. When an indirect object pronoun is used, it replaces the entire prepositional phrase; for example, « Je lui ai donné un livre » ("I gave him a book"). Broadly speaking, lui and leur are used to refer to people, and y (see, below) is used to refer to things. However, lui and leur will sometimes also be used in referring to things. Lui, leur, and y are replaced with se (s' before a vowel) when the indirect object refers to the same entity as the subject; see, below. As mentioned above, the indirect object pronouns are not always used to replace indirect objects:

Reflexive pronouns

In French, as in English, reflexive pronouns are used in place of direct- and indirect-object pronouns that refer to the same entity or entities as the subject. A verb with a reflexive pronoun is called a reflexive verb, and has many grammatical particularities aside from the choice of pronoun; see French verbs. There are four kinds of reflexive verbs: All four kinds use the reflexive pronouns, and exhibit the grammatical particularities of reflexive verbs.

Disjunctive pronouns

Disjunctive pronouns are the strong forms of French pronouns, the forms used in isolation and in emphatic positions (compare the use of me in the English sentence "Me, I believe you, but I am not sure anyone else will"; for more, see Intensive pronoun). In French, disjunctive pronouns are used in the following circumstances: The reflexive disjunctive form soi can be used as the object of a preposition, if it refers to the same entity as the subject. For example, « Un voyageur sait se sentir chez soi n'importe où », "A traveller knows how to feel at home anywhere." Note that this does not make the verb reflexive.

The pronoun y

The pronoun y has two distinct uses:

The pronoun en

The pronoun en has the following uses:

Clitic order

French personal pronouns, aside from their disjunctive forms, are all clitics, and the order of pronominal clitics as well as the negative clitic ne is strictly determined as follows. Only one clitic can be used for each slot. Where one wishes to express an idea that would involve slots that cannot coexist or multiple pronouns from the same slot, the indirect object is expressed as the object of à or pour (thus Je me donne à toi – "I give myself to you"). The use of more than two clitics beyond the subject and, where necessary, ne is uncommon; constructions such as Je lui y en ai donné may be perceived as unacceptable, and other constructions must then be used to express the same ideas.