French subject pronouns are just what they sound like: they are specific pronouns that form the subject of the sentence. By “subject” we don’t mean just any thing/concept/person a sentence includes, but the subject in a grammatical sense. And subject pronouns are the words like “he”, “she”, “it”, and “they”. Let’s discuss each part.
First, what are the subjects of a sentence?
Subjects answer the question of who or what is doing the action of the sentence. Subjects are often, but not always, at the very beginning of the sentence or close to it.
Examples of English sentences with the subject noun (meaning a specific person or thing) of the sentence in bold:
“Marianne went to the coast.”
“My friends are so much fun.”
“When the phone rang, Jean ignored it.”
Second, what are English and French subject pronouns?
Using the same sentences as above, we can replace the subject nouns with subject pronouns:
“She went to the coast.”
“They are so much fun.”
“When the phone rang, he ignored it.”
English Subject pronouns
The full list of subject pronouns in English is below. On this and other websites that teach French, pronouns are always listed in a chart like this, with the first, second, and third person forms forming the rows, and singular and plural forms forming the columns.
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st Person | I | we |
| 2nd Person | you | you |
| 3rd Person | he/she/it* | they |
* You’ll notice that “it” and “he” and “she” are all listed in the same category. This is because French doesn’t have an “it” that can just be dropped into any sentence to refer to anything that isn’t a person. All French nouns have a gender, which means the subject pronoun of a sentence is referred to as a “he” or a “she” in most cases, even if the subject of the sentence is not a person. The concept of nouns having gender is one important way that French differs from English.
French Subject pronouns
The equivalent subject pronouns in French:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st Person | je | nous (and sometimes on) |
| 2nd Person | tu (and sometimes vous) | vous |
| 3rd Person | il/elle/on | ils/elles |
Differences in English and French subject pronouns
In most ways, French and English subject pronouns are easily translatable. However, there are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind as an English speaker.
The gender of nouns
You’ will always need to keep in mind whether the French objects or people you are referring to are feminine or masculine, and whether they are singular or plural. Making the distinction mentally as you speak or write is a habit you will learn as you gain experience.
The “you”‘s
One of the biggest pronoun differences is in translating “you” in French versus English, because there are are two different kinds of “you” in French, and you’ll have to decide when should you use one versus the other.
- The singular you, tu, is used for people you are close to, like family and friends, children, and people of lower status.
- Vous is used for two purposes: 1) the easy one to learn, which is addressing more than one person, but 2) as the “respectful” option, such as with people you don’t know well and people of higher status than you.
Sidenote: The same distinction once existed in English, which you may have noticed if you have read older works, such as the Canterbury Tales. “Thou” was once the familiar, singular version of “you”, while the word “you” was used for formal relationships or to address multiple people. But English lost the “thou” over the centuries, leaving us with just “you” in all uses of the second person.
Je
First, you do not capitalize je, unlike the pronoun “I” in English.
It is also shortened to j’ when a word beginning with a vowel follows it. This contraction is called elision and is used to prevent two vowel sounds from being heard in a row (which is one of the many ways French prioritizes pronunciation). For example:
J’arrive, but tu arrives
J’essaye, but tu essayes
It might seem logical that you would do the same thing with tu, to create t’arrives or t’essaies. However, tu is never shortened like this. (Instead, the direct and indirect object pronoun te is).
On
On translates a couple of different ways in English.
- It can mean “one” as an impersonal statement, in sentences that English would translate to things like: “One should do this…”, “One should be aware…”, etc.
- It can also be used in place of nous, often for sentences with a clear action implied, such as on va, or on part, and in cases where the exact members of the group of people are not known.
When you use on in a sentence, whether you’re using it to refer to a single person or a group, you always use the third person singular verb conjugation (the conjugation used for il/elle). On never gets the nous conjugation, even if you’re using it to refer to a group.
Ils and Elles
In French, masculine is the “default” gender of objects, much in the same way that in older English writing, using “he” and “him” in is supposed to refer to both men and women.
French pronouns, whether they are inanimate objects and people, are referred to as ils, unless the group only has women or female gender objects, in which case the pronoun becomes elles. This is the same way that gender with French adjectives works.
Next Steps after French Subject Pronouns
That’s it for subject pronouns! If you’ve got this lesson down, the natural next step might be to learn about direct and indirect pronouns, which work a little differently from object pronouns in English.
