Personal Pronouns in English! Learn personal pronouns definition, useful rules and examples with ESL printable infographic.
Contents
Personal Pronouns
Personal Pronouns are used for a specific object or person and they change their forms to indicate the different genders, numbers, case and persons speaking. For examples:
- Anna told him to take the food to them as soon as possible as it was urgently needed.
- ‘Him’ is a Pronoun of gender.
‘Them’ is a Pronoun of number showing that there is more than one person, and it is also a Pronoun of case as it is referring to a specific group in an objective manner.
‘It’ is also a Pronoun of gender showing the object (food).
Personal pronouns may take on various forms depending on the number (singular or plural for the most part). They may also take different forms depending on case, gender, or formality. So we can see that Personal Pronouns can be based on:
GENDER
– He went to the market.
He is used for the male gender. Other examples are – His, Him, He, etc.
– She is doing the laundry.
She is used for the female gender. Other examples are – Her, Hers, etc.
– It is important to them.
It is gender neutral as it shows an object, them is also gender neutral as “them” can consist of both genders. Other gender neutral pronouns are – Their, They, Its, etc.
NUMBER
Singular Pronouns – Where the pronoun is only referring to one specific noun.
– That book belongs to me.
“Me” refers to one singular person only.
Plural Pronouns – Where the pronoun is used to refer to a number of nouns.
– That is their book, not yours.
Their shows a number of people, hence it’s a plural personal pronoun. Whereas the ‘yours’ in this sentence is another example of a singular personal pronoun.
CASES
Subjective Case:
– She is at work.
‘She’ is the main subject of the sentence, hence in this sentence, ‘she’ is the subjective personal pronoun. You can ask the question ‘who/what is doing ______?’ to recognize whether a pronoun is subjective or objective.
Objective Case:
– He will meet us later.
‘Us’ is the objective personal noun as it the object of the verb meet. ‘He’ is the subject as he is the person who will be doing the action of meeting.
Possessive Case:
– That is our clubhouse.
‘Our’ shows the possession of the object ‘clubhouse’. Possessive pronouns can also be used to show possession over people.
Comparing Subject and Object Pronouns
Use the following table to compare subject and object pronouns. Notice that some subject pronouns are identical to certain object pronouns.
Subject Pronoun | Object Pronoun |
It | It |
You | You |
What | What |
I | Me |
He | Him |
She | Her |
We | Us |
Who | Whom |
They | Them |
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