These are pronouns that replace nouns that indirectly complement the verb with the aide of a preposition such as À ( à le = au, à les = aux) . If you ask the questions ? or ? after the verb, you will NOT get an answer, but if you ask the question TO WHAT or TO WHOM, you will get an answer.
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| French |
English |
French |
English |
| ME |
to me |
NOUS |
to us |
| TE |
to you |
VOUS |
to you |
| LUI |
to him / to her |
LEUR |
to them |
Note that LUI which sounds masculine also replaces to her .
Bear in mind that me and te adopt the elided forms m' and t' before verbs beginning with a vowel, or a mute h.
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- As-tu téléphoné depuis le début de l'année?
- Ask the question QUOI for things and QUI for people after the verb : As-tu remis ton travail qui (asked after the verb)? Unless the question À QUI is asked, the object à tes parents cannot be found (there is therefore a preposition between the verb and the complement - it is an indirect complement).
- Then choose among the list of indirect object pronouns the one that can replace the noun à tes parents (masc. plur.) or to them (leur) . The pronoun is the appropriate one.
- Oui, je ai téléphoné la semaine dernière.
NOTE: 1) that some verbs, unlike English, are followed by à (e.g., téléphoner à, plaire à, offrir à, demander à, dire à ) in French and require an indirect object, and 2) that the object pronoun LEUR should not be confused with the possessive adjective LEUR . When the object pronoun LEUR is always singular, the possessive adjective LEUR can take the plural form like in the following example: Ils ont bien fait leurs devoirs.
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- As-tu écrit une lettre ? (You have to replace à Jeanne with a complement. The question to be asked is: Tu as écrit une lettre à qui? à Jeanne .
- According to the list, should be the correct pronoum
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Oui, je ai écrit une lettre.
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as-tu remis les clés de la voiture ? (Did you return the car keys to us?)
- This sentence could also be read as this: As-tu remis les clés de la voiture À NOUS? Remember that, in French, most of the time pronouns precede verbs and in case of indirect object pronouns, the preposition À is dropped, but they still function as indirect object pronoun. So nous has to be replaced by another indirect complement in the answer. To answer this particular question, will then be used .
- Non, je ne ai pas remis les clés de la voiture. Les voilà. (No, I didn't return the car keys to YOU )
NOTE that in this example as in the one before, there is also a direct object complement in the sentence that could have also been replaced by a pronoun. In the sentence : As-tu écrit une lettre à Jeanne? 'une lettre' is a direct object complement which could have been replaced by EN (EN is used to replace the phrase 'une lettre' because of the article UNE). Similarly, in the sentence: Nous as-tu remis les clés de la voiture ? 'les clés de la voiture' is a direct object complement which could have been replaced by LES. In case of sentences that include more than one pronoun, one needs to know the particular position of each of these pronouns. We will come back to sentences with two pronouns later on.
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