What is a pronoun?

A pronoun is a word which stands in place of a noun to avoid repeating it.

The pronouns are classified as "1st person","2nd Person" and "3rd Person".

Where do these labels come from? Well, try to imagine a situation where I am talking; maybe I am giving a lecture or a speech or reading aloud my autobiography. There is only one person talking, and I am that person. So, the pronoun "I" is called the First Person Singular.
Now if I were talking to another person, this conversation now involves two people, and I would ask the other person questions using the pronoun you. So, the pronoun "you" is called the Second Person Singular.
If you and I were talking to each other about someone else, we refer to this third person as "he" or "she"; we might, of course be talking about the weather and we would refer to this third thing as "it". So the pronouns "he, she, it" and called the Third Person Singular.
Maybe it would be easier if you looked at the seven English pronouns and their grammatical names:

That, however, is not the end of the story, because you know that there are more pronouns, like "him" and "me" and "them". So why are they not included in the table above?To understand the reason we need to understand a grammatical concept called CASE. In English he and him are two different cases of the same pronoun; as native English speakers, you instinctively know when to use which one (although many English speakers make a bad grammatical error with these pronouns, but more of that later).
Look at the following sentences as you should see a glaring grammatical error in each one.

1. It was my dad's birthday; I forgot to buy anything for he.
2. They are strangers to I; me have never seen they before.
3. Us did not go to the wedding, although them sent we an invitation.

You would be able to correct the mistakes in the above sentences, but would you be able to explain to a learner of English why they are wrong? The answer is that the pronouns are in the wrong cases.
The case indicates whether the pronoun is the subject or object in the sentence and it's time now to make sure that you understand what all these terms mean; they may sound daunting but there is nothing very difficult about them.

Firstly the subject in a sentence is the noun or pronoun which performs the action of the verb and it appears in the sentence before the verb.
The object is the noun or pronoun which receives the action of the verb and it comes after the verb.

We are going to use the Latin case names now to make things easier although the cases have quite long names:
The NOMINATIVE CASE indicates the subject of the sentence,
The ACCUSATIVE CASE indicates the object in the sentence and this is the case which is used after prepositions. Let's put all that information together into one table:

In English only the pronouns have cases, but in many other languages, all the nouns also have cases. Let's take a moment to look at a very frequent error in English. Look at the following sentences and decide which ones are correct:

1. My brother and me often went fishing.
2. My brother and I often went fishing.
3. They invited my friend and I to the wedding.
4. They invited my friend and me to the wedding.
5. The invitation was for my brother and I.
6. The invitation was for my brother and me.

Sentence 1. is wring because the opening phrase (My brother and me) is the subject of the sentence, so the pronoun should be in the nominative case not the accusative. You would never say "Me went fishing" and it is equally incorrect to say "Me and my brother went fishing" and it makes no difference if you alter the order of the words in the phrase.

Sentence 2 is correct: the opening phrase (My brother and I) is the subject and is correctly in the nominative case.

Sentence 3 is wrong because the phrase "my friend and I" is the object of the verb and should be in the accusative.

Sentence 4 is correct for the same reason as given in sentence 3.

Sentence 5 is wrong because the phrase "my brother and I" follows the preposition "for" and after prepositions pronoun or phrases which contain them must go into the accusative case.

Sentence 6 is correct for the same reason as given in sentence 5.

Now it's time for a spot of revision. Try the following exercise to see if you have understood the labels we give to the pronouns:

Exercise 1   What are pronouns which have the following grammatical names:

1. 3rd Person Plural
2. 2nd Person Singular
3. Ist Person Plural
4. 2nd Person Plural
5. Ist Person Singular

Check your answers here.

Exercise 2   Give me as full a description as possible of the following pronouns, mentioning person, number and case:

1. me
2. they
3. her
4. us
5. he

Check your answers here.

Exercise 3   You will find below a table of the pronouns (in the nominative case) in a variety of languages. Examine them carefully and then answer the questions which follow the table. You might want to download and print the table. The standard abbreviations have been used for 'person', 'singular' and 'plural'

Now, using the information above, what is the grammatical name for each of the pronouns listed below?

1. they
2. tu
3. Sie (Watch! It has a capital S)
4. vos
5. nous
6. elles
7. she
8. ich
9. il
10. du

Check your answers here

Exercise 4 — Parsing
This is the name we give to the exercise of describing a verb precisely, giving 3 pieces of information:

1. person (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
   
   
2. number (sing. or plur.)
   
   
3. tense (present, future, or past)

For example "she has vanished" is parsed: 3rd pers. sing. past tense.

Now parse each of the following verbs, giving the three pieces of information shown above:

1. we shall overcome
2. she has vanished
3. they are fighting
4. I think
5. he was watching
6. it had been raining
7. you will all succeed
8. he has
9. she will be waiting
10. they were quarrelling

Check you answers here.

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