Personal pronouns

- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians! I want to talk about personal pronouns. But before I get too specific with that, I just want to write out some sentences for you. Now, all of these words that I'm about to circle, "I," "we," "you," "you," and, "they," are personal pronouns. We decide which personal pronouns are appropriate for a given sentence depending on whom we're talking about. I'll explain. In English, we divide personal pronouns into three basic types. There are pronouns that are about me. There are pronouns that are about you. And there are pronouns that are people or things that are neither me nor you. Another way of saying this is that this is the first person, the second person, and the third person. Another way to divide up these pronouns is to divide it into the singular and the plural. The one, and the more than one. So in English, if we're only talking about one person that includes me, well, then we'd be talking about pronouns like, "I," "me," "my," and, "mine." But if I am in a group of two or more people, we don't refer to ourselves as, "I." We refer to ourselves as, "we," or, "us," or, "our," or, "ours." And if I were talking about you or something that belonged to you, whether it was singular or plural I would say, "you," "your," and, "yours." So when I said, "You are a capable person," and I said, "You are capable people," I was trying to demonstrate that "you" is the same, whether it's singular or plural. Whether there is one person in "you", or more than one person. In standard American English, there is no difference between just one person and multiple people when you're addressing them directly, in what we call, "the second person." So if we're talking about people or things that are neither me nor you when there's only one of those people or things, we would refer to that person or thing as, "she," "her," "hers," "he," "him," or, "his," or, "it," and, "its." Now if we're talking about more than one person or thing that is neither me nor you, then we would say, "they," "them," "their," or, "theirs." Now there is most certainly a way to distinguish between, "I," and, "me," and, "my," and, "mine." For the meantime, just take a look at this chart. Pause the screen if you have to. Maybe practice saying them out loud and figuring out which one corresponds to which box. If I say, "it," is that in the first, second, or third person? Am I talking about me, you, or a person or thing that is neither me nor you? If I talk about "them", am I talking about me or you or people that are neither you nor me? Give it a try, check out the exercise, we'll go deeper in the next video. You can learn anything. David out.