What are pronouns, and how do different languages use them?

Pronouns are little words with big responsibility. They stand in for nouns, can sum up whole phrases, and give more information about the noun itself. In this post, we'll dig into some pronouns about people and possession and how they might work differently in the language you're learning!

In this post:

• Why do we need pronouns?
• What do pronouns tell us?
• What do pronouns have to do with (grammatical) gender?
• Have pronouns always been the same?
• Why do some people have pronouns in their email signature?

Pronouns avoid unnecessary repetition

Grammatically, pronouns' main job is to take the place of something that's already been said. That way you're not repeating yourself so much. (The pro in pronoun means "in place of.")

So if Junior is talking about bubble gum ice cream with sprinkles, the first time he brings it up he might say:

Bubble gum ice cream with sprinkles is my absolute favorite!

And the next time he mentions it, he might just say: 

It is so good that I want to eat it for every meal!

That sentence means the same as "Bubble gum ice cream with sprinkles is so good that I want to eat bubble gum ice cream with sprinkles for every meal," but using the pronoun it is useful because we already know what he's referring to. We can replace the whole noun phrase “bubble gum ice cream with sprinkles” with the pronoun.

Pronouns also work with people's names. Instead of always repeating someone's whole name, you can refer back to them with a pronoun. You normally won’t hear people say:

Junior loves ice cream, and if Junior had Junior's way, Junior would eat it for every meal.

Instead, a more natural way to say it is with pronouns: 

Junior loves ice cream, and if he had his way, he would eat it for every meal.

Pronouns tell us different things in different languages

Pronouns include all sorts of information, depending on the language! They help indicate different information about a noun:

Formality 

In many dialects of Spanish, tú (you) is the pronoun for speaking directly to a person you know well, and usted (you) is the pronoun for speaking to someone you don't know or should be polite towards.

How many

In French, tu (you) is the pronoun for talking to one person, and vous (you all) is used for talking to a group of people. (And actually, vous is also the formal pronoun!) We used to have this in English, too: Thou was for talking to one person, and you was only for talking to groups!

Who is included

In some languages, including Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and (spoken) French, there is one pronoun for "we" when you mean you and the person you're talking to (inclusive), and a different version of "we" when you mean you and someone else who isn't the person you're talking to (exclusive).

Traits of people and things

Some languages have different pronouns for men and women, in other languages categories are based on animacy (whether something is human or not), and languages like Zulu and Swahili have categories for animals, things that are expansive (like lakes and the sky), and many more! They affect the language’s grammar in different ways—like changing the form of an adjective.

Subject vs. object

Some languages use a different set of pronouns depending on whether the pronoun is the subject or the object of the sentence. While English (and many others) differentiate between I as a subject and me as an object, Mandarin Chinese uses the same pronoun in both cases.

But wait… There’s more?

Sometimes, pronouns indicate possession or reflexivity. In Japanese, they may tell you something about gender expression and the degree of it. And Spanish has a special pronoun (se) that takes on many different functions.

Pronouns can indicate the gender of any noun, people included

Some languages, including many languages from Europe, categorize nouns by gender, so there are pronouns for the different gender categories, too—even for nouns that aren't about people. In a language like Spanish, which divides nouns into masculine and feminine, human men as well as grammatically masculine nouns like teléfono (phone) and zapato (shoe) all get matched with masculine pronouns like él (he) and este (this / this one). On the other hand, grammatically feminine nouns such as manzana (apple) and mesa (table) are matched with feminine pronouns like la (she) and esta (this / this one):

Masculine pronoun in Spanish

Feminine pronoun in Spanish

German and Russian have masculine and feminine categories, as well as a third category called neuter:

Masculine pronoun in German

Feminine pronoun in German

Neuter pronoun in German

(English nouns used to be masculine, feminine, or neuter, too! Here's a little more about gendered nouns and their rules, if you're interested.)

Sometimes when talking about people, the gender of the person or group of people isn't known or relevant. The gender you need to express might not be covered by the two categories of men (masculine pronouns) and women (feminine pronouns). Languages have different ways of addressing those situations. English often uses they in these situations, and has been doing so for hundreds of years.

• Yesterday I was in line behind this person at Target, and they were taking forever! (person's gender isn't known or relevant)
• If someone isn't feeling well, they should stay home. (person's gender isn't relevant)
• My friend was telling me that their family is coming to visit next week. (person's gender is not relevant or not covered by the two categories of men and women)

In languages like Spanish and Italian, pronouns aren't always necessary, so sometimes choosing either masculine or feminine isn't an issue at all—you can just leave it out:

In other cases, where a pronoun is necessary but the person it refers to doesn't identify as a man or a woman, languages are evolving new pronouns, like Spanish elle. This is called a neopronoun, or new pronoun, and some English neopronouns are ze and xe.

Pronouns can evolve and change over time

We come up with new nouns and verbs all the time—if you can believe it, there was once a time when "googling" wasn't a thing, and neither were "podcasts." Pronouns don't change as much, but they do come, go, and change! 

In fact, the English pronoun they didn't even come from English: It was borrowed from a Scandinavian language almost a thousand years ago, and the original English pronoun slowly dropped out of use and vanished from the language. English you has also changed a lot over the last millennium; it used to be only for groups of people (like y'all) or for formal situations with one person. Today it's used for talking directly to anyone, no matter how formal or whether it's one person or a hundred.

Pronouns may be communicated openly

In recent years, it has become increasingly common in the U.S. for people to include their pronouns in professional contexts, such as email signatures. You might also see pronouns on somebody’s business card or their name tag at a conference. By displaying their pronouns, people indicate how they would like to be referred to.

Pronouns are often added after or below a person’s name, sometimes in parentheses. For example, somebody called Lily who identifies as female may put the following in her email signature:

Lily
(she/her)

This lets us know that person’s preferred pronouns. If someone hasn’t shared their pronouns or you’re unsure which pronouns they use, you could politely ask them, or you can use a gender-neutral option like “they/them” in English.

You’re becoming a pro at understanding pronouns

You can expect to learn something new about pronouns in the language you're studying! That might mean learning new categories, new formalities, or new genders. What have you noticed about pronouns in your new language?