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Course: Grammar > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Introduction to pronounsPersonal pronouns
Meet the personal pronouns! These words help us talk about ourselves (like "I" and "we"), others (like "you"), and different people or things (like "he", "she", "they", or "it").
Want to join the conversation?
- His dog is cute(58 votes)
- I agree truly the best pupper(32 votes)
- Don't personal pronouns include ALL pronouns?(10 votes)
- Well, there's also indefinite pronouns, like
something
oranything
, or relative pronouns likethat
orwhich
.
You could certainly argue thatsomething
is a third-person pronoun, so I suppose you're right! But when we refer to personal pronouns, we're usually referring to more definite things, more likeit
orshe
rather thanwhatever
orwho
.(71 votes)
- Is Australian English pretty much the the same as American English?(9 votes)
- The differences between Englishes are quite small, but Australian English is more like British (UK) English than it is like American English. But you should understand that if an Englishman, an Australian and an American went into a bar they could have a good time and understand each other perfectly, except for a few details that they could laugh about. For instance, American men wear 'pants' below the waist, but Brits wear 'trousers'. Brits wear 'pants' under their 'trousers' - though they sometimes even call them 'underpants'. This difference results in much harmless mirth and mild confusion.(30 votes)
- im not a gramarian am i(8 votes)
- You are. But your usages of capitalization and punctuation indicate that you're not yet a really skillful one.
A vegetarian is a person who eats only vegetables.
A contrarian is a person who acts in a way that is contrary to the prevailing opinion.
A pedestrian is a person who goes from place to place on foot.
A Wagnerian opera is one that was written by Wagner.
A Shakespearian actor performs roles onstage which were written by Shakespeare.
A Romanian is a person from Romania.
Now, with all those examples, can you guess what a grammarian might be?(26 votes)
- 1. Your dog is adorable, what breed is she?
2. Some people are now choosing to use it/its as their personal pronouns, would you say that breaks grammatical rules?(10 votes)- This is not a matter of grammar, but of style.
Using "it" for animals is just fine. They are not offended.
Using gendered pronouns for persons is not wrong, but IS presumptive.
"Your baby is adorable. What's your preferred gender?"(4 votes)
- She is a perfect dog.(10 votes)
- She’s a perfect dog.(4 votes)
- why do you say David out?(4 votes)
- I don't say that. David Rheinstrom DID say it when he made the videos between 2014 and 2016. It is a practice he learned from watching movies about soldiers in the field communicating by two-way radio. When someone was finished, and did not expect a reply to the last thing he or she said, the speaker would say the personal call sign, followed by the word "out". When he used that method to end these videos, David Rheinstrom was playing soldier.(12 votes)
- Are personal pronouns a bit like pronoun but work completeley diffrent and they talk about personal things I mean like ourselves?(5 votes)
- Personal pronouns are a type of pronoun.(6 votes)
- why did you not say my when you circled it? if you get these please reply(6 votes)
- You say that "it" is never used in reference to a person. However, with chosen pronouns, there are a few people who do refer to be referred to as "it." I say this because one of those people is a student of mine.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Hello, grammarians, let's talk about personal pronouns, but first let me lay
some sentences on you. Jake and I baked a loaf of bread. We baked a loaf of bread. You can learn anything. My friends are cool. They are cool. Now I'm gonna circle a few of these words, so the ones I wrote in yellow,
and point them out to you. I, we, you, my, they, these are personal pronouns. They're pronouns that change depending on how you're using them. On whether you're using them
as the object of a sentence, as the subject to show
ownership, and so on. But we'll get to those in later videos. For now, I'm gonna talk about the three basic types of English pronoun. Broadly speaking, there
are pronouns about me, pronouns about you, and pronouns about
something or someone else. This is an idea called grammatical person. Pronouns about me are first person, pronouns about you are second person, and pronouns about
something or someone else are third person. So, when I say I love my dog, Phryne. I is a first person pronoun. In the sentence, she is an excellent dog,
where she subs out for Phryne, she is a third person pronoun. Here is a picture of Phryne, I think we can all agree, she is perfect. Thank you. Okay. So what I want to do here is fill out this table with some of the basic pronouns we use to talk about ourselves divided between singular,
that is one person, and plural, or more than one person. Some first person pronouns
are I, me, my, and mine. But what if there's more than one of me? What if I'm part of a group and I wanna refer to that group? Well, then I'd use a plural pronoun like we, us, our, or ours. Second and third person are interesting because they have pronouns
that pull double duty. In second person, the singular and plural are identical. Singular second person
is you, your, and yours. And plural second person is the same, you, your, and yours. That is to say, it's
the same whether or not you're referring to one
person, here in singular, or many people, here in plural. Understanding whether you meet one you or a plural you depends on context. And it's usually very easy to figure out. Third person pronouns belong
to the most crowded category because the world is
full of things and people who are neither me nor you. For singular pronouns we
have she, her, and hers, he, him, and his, they, them, their and theirs and it, and its. They, like you, can refer
to both a single person or multiple people, but it doesn't specify a
gender like she and he do. This is extremely useful. I'd take note that the word it only refers to inanimate objects and sometimes non-human animals, but never to people. A robot? Yes. A person? Not so much. Now, in the plural category, much simpler, we have they, them, their, and theirs. Similar to singular versus plural you singular versus plural
they depends on context and it'll be obvious
from the words around it which one you mean. This is a lot of information to swallow. Pause this if you need to practice saying the different pronouns aloud, do the exercises on the
Khan Academy site or app. This is not the only time I'll be talking about personal pronouns in this course. So we have an opportunity to go deeper, especially if you want to
know more about the history of the singular use of
they, which is super cool. In the meantime, please enjoy this second
image of my dog, Phryne, who is, again, as I said, a perfect dog. You can learn anything. David out.