Download October 2010 Grammar Corner: French Pronouns

October 2010 Grammar Corner: French Pronouns
Think French Grammar Corner is brought to you by Camille Chevalier-Karfis.
Camille has been
teaching adults in private and group classes for over 15 years. After years of observing her students
struggle with existing teaching methods, Camille developed her own French method geared towards
adult speakers. To complement this unique teaching approach, Camille has written two audio books
and has created more than 60 hours of French audio training material. All of Camille’s audio books,
podcasts, audio lessons can be found on her site www.FrenchToday.com. Camille is also available
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A pronoun is a small word which replaces a noun. Today, we’ll look at stress
pronouns and object pronouns, which are the ones that confuse learners of
French the most.
1 - How to pick the right pronoun?
First, you have to figure out the grammatical value of the
word you want to replace. For example ; Tina regarde la télévision. Qui regarde ? Tina regarde. Tina est le
sujet. Therefore, I will choose a subject pronoun to replace Tina. The list of subject pronoun is: Je, tu, il, elle,
on, nous, vous, ils, elles.
This is often the biggest problem Americans face when dealing with pronouns. They don’t know how to figure
out the grammatical value of the noun they want to replace. To solve this problem, I strongly suggest you get this
book, available on Amazon: English Grammar for Students of French: The Study Guide for Those Learning
French.
2- Stress pronouns
They are used after c’est, alone (as in pointing to someone to say “him”, or raising
your hand to get picked), and before and after prepositions
- c’est moi. Avec toi. Lui et moi. - Moi, moi !! (Shouting it out to get picked to sing with.)
The list is moi, toi, LUI, ELLE, nous, vous EUX ELLES
Note that in stress pronouns, LUI is used only for MASCULINE singular and also learn the plural masculine
EUX - pronounced like jE
3 - Direct and indirect object pronouns
To find out the COD (complement d’objet direct) and
the COI (complement d’objet indirect) it is essential that you ask your grammatical questions IN FRENCH. the
problem with these is that English may take a COI where French takes a COD...
your grammar questions are:
subject + verb + qui/quoi ? = COD
subject + verb + à qui = COI
The COI is always a person
The COD may be a thing or a person
Tina donne les fleurs à Paul
Tina donne quoi ? Les fleurs = COD
Tina donne à qui ? à Paul = COI
Think French - Octobre 2010
The list of COD pronouns is: me, te, le/la, nous, vous, les (note me, te, le/la become m’, t’, l’ + vowel or h)
The list of COI pronouns is: me, te, LUI, nous, vous, leur (note they become me and te become m’ or t’ +
vowel or h) So, for a COI, lui means him AND her.
Note that for both object groups, me, te, nous, vous are the same. So the pronoun only change between le/la/l’
or lui and les or leur.
Pronouns usually go right before the CONJUGATED verb, or the “pas” in the negative
je la regarde
je l’ai regardée
je ne la regarde pas
A LOT OF verb take direct object pronouns.
ONLY A FEW VERBS take indirect object pronouns ; acheter à, emprunter à (to borrow), prêter à (to
lend) offrir à, rendre à, donner à, vendre à, parler à, demander à, dire à, telephoner à, ecrire à, sourire à,
repondre à, souhaiter à, envoyer à, laisser à, présenter à, servir à, raconter à... So the best thing to do is to dill
with this verbs and lui and leur... je lui téléphone, nous leur vendons....
Je connais Martine = je connais qui ? Martine
COD feminine singular
Je la connais
for feminine singular, your “choice” of object pronoun is between “la, l’” or “lui” but it is never “elle”, so it
will never be “je elle connais” or “je connais elle”. Same goes for masuline : you choice is “le, l’ or lui”, never il.
You also need to be careful about your liaisons with nous, vous, les.
ma mère arrose les fleurs le soir
ma mère arrose quoi ? ma mère arrose les fleurs - femine, plural. COD
ma mère les Zarrose le soir
4 - What is really confusing
Now, you see that pronouns are confusing, because the same words have
different values. NOUS and VOUS are the form for almost all pronouns: subject, stress, object, reflexive...
LUI can mean “for/with/by - HIM - masculine singular ONLY when it is a stress pronoun - AND him or her
when it is an indirect object pronoun.
LEUR means them, but it’s also the form of the possessive adjective “their”; voici leur maison.
LE, LA, L’, LES, les are direct object pronouns AND definite articles meaning the.
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