Personal Pronouns

A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun.

1) Alice is my friend. She is a good girl.
2) John is a good singer. He has won several prizes.

Here the pronoun she stands for the noun Alice. Similarly, the pronoun he stands for the noun John.

There are several different kinds of pronouns:

• Personal pronoun
• Reflexive pronoun
• Emphatic pronoun
• Demonstrative pronoun
• Indefinite pronoun
• Interrogative pronoun
• Distributive pronoun
• Reciprocal pronoun
• Relative pronoun

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are words like my, me, your, he, his, they etc. They belong to three classes: first person, second person and third person.

First person

The pronouns I, me, my, mine, we, us, our and ours are said to be in the first person because they stand for the person speaking.

This is my house.
I have a sister.
We have a car.
The car is ours.
This house is mine.
Our house is big.

Second person

The pronouns you, your and yours are said to be in the second person because they stand for the person or persons spoken to.

You are a good girl.
Is this bag yours?
Which is your boy?

Third Person

The pronouns he, his, him, she, her, hers, they, their, theirs, them, it and its are said to be in the third person.

Grammar notes:

The possessive has two forms – my, mine; our, ours; your, yours; her, hers; their, theirs. The forms my, our, your, her and their are used before a noun and the forms mine, ours, yours, hers, theirs are used after a noun.

This is my house.
This house is mine.
That is her car.
That car is hers.
It is their fault.
The fault is theirs.