Pronouns

Pronouns either take the place of nouns or make reference to them. They are very important, but there aren't very many of them: there are just over 100 pronouns in English, but we use them all the time!

Types of pronouns

Pronouns are some of the most frequently used words in English: 25 of the 100 most common English words are pronouns!1  Pronouns are usually broken into categories, and you should understand the different types so that you can use them correctly (in details and in life.)

Subject Pronouns

In English, the subject pronouns include the subject form of the personal pronouns: I, it, he, she, we, you and they. Many indefinite pronouns can also be used as subject pronouns, such as someone, anyone, somebody, everyone, et cetera.

She doesn't like robots.

When playing details, every starter sentence already has a subject, so if you want to add a subject pronoun, you'll also need a conjunction card (usually). For example, we can add and  and I to the sentence "The elephant ate cupcakes" to get

The elephant and I ate cupcakes.

But be careful doing this: in some tenses, some verbs have different endings depending on whether the subject is singular or plural, i.e we say "I am" but "we are", and "he eats" but "he and she eat". You can't change "He likes cookies" to

He and she likes cookies.

That would be wrong, wrong, wrong! Don't do it! "Likes" as a verb needs a singular subject. But this would be fine:

He or she likes cookies.

Object pronouns

The personal object pronouns in English are "me", "us", "you", "her", "him", "it" and "them".

The girls all hate him.

We threw apples at them.

Indefinite pronouns can also be used as object pronouns:

She hates everybody.

Possessive pronouns

In English the possessive pronouns are "mine", "yours", "his", "hers", "its", "ours" and "theirs" Please note that "its" has no apostrophe: with an apostrophe, "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Possessive pronouns can function as ether subjects or objects:

Mine are yellow.

The dog ate yours.

Possessive pronouns are often confused with possessive adjectives, because they look the same or similar ("my", "your", "his", "her", "its", "our", "their"), but they are used differently. You can say your dog  but not yours dog.

Reflexive and Intensive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns end in -self or -selves, and there are only nine2 of them: "myself", "yourself", "himself", "herself", "itself", "oneself", "ourselves", "yourselves", "themselves". Reflexive pronouns act like a mirror: they reflect a noun back at itself. They are mainly used when the object of a verb or preposition is the same person or thing as the subect.

The snake ate itself.

I bought myself a new phone.

The winemakers kept the best wine for themselves.

Intensive pronouns are pronouns used right after a noun for emphasis. They look the same as reflexive pronouns, but are used differently. While reflexive pronouns perform a grammatical function —they're an important part of the sentence— intensive pronouns do not. You can remove an intensive pronoun and the sentence means the same thing. Like interjections, intensive pronouns are "extra" words that show how the speaker feels about something.

The Mayor himself thanked me for my volunteer work.

The intensive pronoun shows that "my volunteer work" was important, because even an important person like the mayor thanked me.

Alice cooked dinner herself.

"Herself" indicates that this is significant: maybe Alice is only a child, or maybe it was a huge and excellent meal, we don't know, but we do know that no one else helped.

The big fish eat smaller fish, but the big fish themselves are sometimes eaten by bears.

Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns don't refer to any specific person or thing, they refer to any one of a particular type of thing. "Anyone" is an indefinite pronoun —it doesn't just mean one person, it could be "any" person. There are traditionally twelve indefinite pronouns in English.

anybody, anyone, anything

These are singular pronouns: they refer to one thing out of a group, but it doesn't matter which one.

Anyone can learn how to cook.

I'll dance with anybody.

Do you have anything to eat?

nobody, no one, nothing

These are the negative indefinite pronouns: they mean "not any" of whatever.

No one can beat me at chess.

I have nobody to go to the dance with.

There's nothing to eat.

somebody, someone, something

These are also singular indefinite pronouns, but they refer to some specific but unknown person or thing.

Somebody sent me flowers.

I wish someone would tell me the answer to the riddle.

I want to eat something sweet.

everybody, everyone, everything

These are the plural indefinite pronouns: they refer to all of whatever.

Everything smells like strawberries.

I think everybody should know how to play a musical instrument.

I'd be happy if everyone stopped yelling at me.

Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are used to point at some other specific thing. There are four demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, and those.

That smells like popcorn.

Interrogative pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are used when forming questions. The main ones are what, which, who, whom, and whose.

Who ate my banana?

There are other less common interrogative pronouns like whoever and whatever.

Whatever are you talking about?

Relative pronouns

Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses. Relative clauses relate to some other noun in the sentence, and either define it or give extra information about it.

The guy who kissed Maria fell asleep on the couch.

I know a dog that speaks French.

In the clause "who kissed Maria", "who" is relative to "the guy", and defines exactly which guy is being talked about.

As an example of a non-defining relative clause:

Some guy who kissed Maria fell asleep on the couch.

The difference is that "who" doesn't refer to a specific guy: it could be any guy who kissed Maria (there could be more than one).

1 This isn't completely true: although there are 25 pronouns on the top 100 list, some of them are not used only as pronouns. "One" can be used as a pronoun: "The dragon ate one." But it can also be used as an adjective: "The dragon ate one princess."

2 It is becoming increasingly acceptable to use "themself" when referring to a single person of indeterminate gender, so you can say that their are ten reflexive pronouns. This is similar to how "they" has been used for many, many years to refer to a single person that might be a man, or might be a woman —we don't know, it doesn't matter to the sentence. But it is usually better to use "themselves" instead of "themself".

The customer can leave the movie theater whenever they want.

A pedestrian slipped on the ice and hurt themself.