Hello learners! Welcome. The concept of Personal pronouns is one of the most important concepts in the whole parts of speech. If you are a student of English grammar, this is the chapter you must master in order to easily grasp other chapters and concepts. We all know that a pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun. There are many types of pronouns such as personal pronouns, relative pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, and interrogative pronouns, etc. In this article, we are going to learn about the meaning, types, and example sentences of personal pronouns.
Personal Pronouns – Meaning and Types
Every sentence consists of two important parts. The speaker (or) the subject, the person spoken about (or) the object. These two are indicated by personal pronouns in the sentence. There are three types of personal pronouns.
- The first person is the pronoun that talks about the subject/ the speaker where the self is the one included in the discussion. I and We comprise the first person.
- The second person denotes the person that is spoken to. You is the example of second person.
- The third person is the person that is spoken of. He, She, It, and They are the examples of the Third person.
The Nominative and the Objective Case
Every personal pronoun can be expressed in two cases, i.e., the nominative and the Objective case. We use the nominative case when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence. We use the objective case when the pronoun is the object.
The following table describes the two cases for all the personal pronouns:
| Nominative Case (Singular/ Plural) | Objective Case (Singular/ Plural) |
| I, We | Me, Us |
| You, You | You. |
| He, She, It, They | Him, Her, It, Them |
Examples of the nominative case include:
- He goes for a stroll in the park every day.
- They are getting ready to attend the function.
- She received the honorary doctorate from the Vice-chancellor.
Some Examples of the Objective case are as follows:
- The doctor advised me to rest well.
- The lecturer gave us some work to do.
- I asked her to give me some time to finish the project.
Multiple Pronouns and How to Use them
If more than one pronoun is involved, it is important to split the sentence into two parts and decide the correct pronoun to use. For example,
He, she, and I went shopping. (In this sentence, there are three pronouns. So, in order to use the correct pronoun form, it becomes easy if you split those sentences and determine the right form- He went shopping, she went shopping, I went shopping.
Justin went to the movies with her and me. (In this case, We cannot use she and I as the pronouns, because after splitting the sentence as- Justin went to the movies with her, Justin went to the movies with me. Hence, the objective case is used.
Some more examples of Personal Pronouns:
- I gave them a letter written by her.
- He asked if he could join us.
- Kumar and his friends went to the pool.
- It was me in the background of the photo.
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