# English in Use/Pronoun Usage

Pronoun Usage

A pronoun comes from a Latin word that means \'for a noun\'. It is a
word that stands in for a noun. The English language has lots of
different kinds of pronouns.

Pronouns are often divided into first, second and third person, singular
and plural. First person refers to the speaker, second person refers to
the person or thing being spoken to, and third person refers to a person
or thing neither speaking nor being spoken to.

The first person pronoun (referring to the speaker) is \'I\' or \'me\'
in the singular, and \'we\' or \'us\' in the plural. The first of each
set, \"I/we\", is used as the subject of a verb; the second, \'me/us\',
is used as the object of a verb or preposition. There are also reflexive
pronouns which can be made (i.e. they are the same person as the
subject) by adding the suffix \'-self\' to the possessive
(myself/ourselves).

The second person pronoun (referring to the person being spoken to) is
\'you\' in singular and plural, as subject or object. The reflexive is
\"yourself\" in the singular and \"yourselves\" in the plural.

