Basic French 3: Pronouns and the word “it”

Oddly enough for such a little word, one of the biggest differences between English and French is that French has no single word for the English pronoun “it”, and it is amazing what a difference that makes. It’s the most versatile pronoun we’ve got; it can be subject, direct or indirect object, it can be human, animal or inanimate. And French has no equivalent. Rather, there are several different words meaning “it” and which one you need depends who or what you’re talking about and the grammatical function it serves.

 

Nominative                       Accusative                Dative  (at)               Genitive (of)

je                                           me                            me

tu                                          te                               te

il / elle / on                         le / la                       lui / lui  /  y                   en

nous                                    nous                          nous

vous                                    vous                           vous

ils / elles                               les                           leur  / y                      en

 

Notice the accusative third person pronouns le, la and les look exactly the same as the definite articles le, la and les. You have to be very clear about the difference between a pronoun and an article.

The definite articles le, la and les appear alongside a noun, singling the particular one or ones out distinct from all their kind.

The pronouns le, la and les appear instead of a noun, meaning “it” or “them”

Now, that’s going to take some getting used to, and it can feel mystifying like how will you know it’s a pronoun or not stuck in the middle of a sentence full of words you don’t even know. You’ll never remember the difference.

You will, once you’ve learnt to read French and recognise verb-pronoun groups.

We haven’t even started yet, we couldn’t really until we got articles and pronouns ready first. That’s why I’ve been a bit cursory. The reason I haven’t shown much of anything yet is that you really do need a few pronouns and articles before you start on verbs. I don’t mean you’re supposed to know all these yet, I just mean that you need to see them, be aware of them. All I’ve done here is shove them down and walk away, that’s not teaching anything. We’re still getting set up. we haven’t started yet.

The real beginning of French is when you do verbs. Language isn’t really language without those. Verbs and the relations around verbs is where proper language happens. And that’s where it all gets easier. We’ll be going round in cycles a lot, anyway, add a bit, revise a bit, add a bit. There’s no point trying to learn in one long straight line, and then one day you’re fluent. It doesn’t work like that, and even if it did, it shouldn’t. It’s far more free and dynamic.