Subject Pronouns
We previously learned about “Je m’appelle …” and I briefly introduced subject pronouns, so let’s learn more about them.
Subject pronouns are used to represent the person performing the action in a sentence.
| Person | French Pronoun | English |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | Je | I |
| 2nd person singular | Tu | You (singular, informal) |
| 3rd person singular | Il | He / It |
| Elle | She / It | |
| Special case | On | We / One / People |
| 1st person plural | Nous | We |
| 2nd person plural | Vous | You (plural or formal) |
| 3rd person plural | Ils | They (masculine or mixed) |
| Elles | They (feminine) |
So far so good ? As you can see there is an equivalent for pretty much everything you know in English but let me talk a bit about the mains differences and important ponts
Feminine & Masculine
Even if we haven’t discussed about it yet, I’m pretty sure that you heard about Feminine and Masculine genres when it comes to French language.
French gender is partly logical, partly irregular and often just needs to be memorized. There are still many useful patterns that I will share with you later to predict the genre of an object as well as the correct way to learn new vocabulary.
However in our case we don’t need to stress about it, because for people and animas the gender follow the real gender.
So if you want to say that your sister is called “Clara“, as your sister is a girl then it would be
-
Elle s’appelle Clara ✅
-
Il s’appelle Clara ❌
Plural with Ils and Elles
Here it’s almost the the same as before but there is a modification. In English you only use “They” whatever is the composition of the group (only women, only men, mixed).
In French again we would use Ils if it’s a group of men and Elles if it’s a group of women. BUT ! If the group is mixed then it will be Ils.
- 5 men and 5 women → Ils ✅
- 1 man 99 women → Elles ❌
- 1 man 99 women → Ils ✅
The special case : On
Simply put you can use On instead of Nous when you want to refer to “We”.
But now you might be asking, “Okay then what’s the point of having 2 things to say the same thing ? How do I know which one to use ?“.
On is more used than Nous for everyday life, so it’s sounds more natural than saying Nous. On is used in spoken language while Nous is better suited for writing language (formal writing, speech, literature).
So it’s better for you as On is simpler to pronounce, the only thing that you have to keep in mind is that you are referring to Nous “We” with On which grammaticaly equivalents to “He/She” as it’s 3rd person from singular.
So here is an exemple with what we learned before
- Nous nous appelons Paul et Anna → correct ✅
- On s’appelle Paul et Anna → correct & better for speaking ✅