Hello! And welcome to Like A Native Speaker. this lesson is part 3 in our series about
pronouns. This time, we're learning about third person pronouns.
[introduction]
Before we begin, I would like to ask you a favour. I would like to know if you are interested
in studying with me in a grammar course. If you're interested, please email me at likeanativespeaker1@gmail.com
and just tell me you're interested. I'm working on something pretty awesome.
Of course, first things first. The third person refers to someone other than yourself or the
speaker: someone far away or not involved in the conversation.
Or not currently the focus of the conversation. Third person pronouns are perhaps the most
complicated because there are so many of them. Similar to the other videos, we're going to
break it down into the four types. The first type is subject, single. We actually
have three of these depending on gender. For men we have 'he'.
For women we have 'she'. And if it has no gender, we use 'it'.
Now if you look at the object case, we have the three words again, but two of them have
changed a little bit. He has become him. If your word is in the
object position, you must use him. Brazilians, I'm looking at you!
She becomes her. And it stays it. This one has the most to remember because
you need to consider if your noun is male or female or neither.
And sometimes it can be tricky, especially with animals. If you don't know the gender,
you might use the wrong one and offend the owner of the animal.
It can be the same with babies. Honestly, I don't have a baby. Right now,
I don't want a baby. So sometimes I make the mistake of using it for babies. And mothers
are not super happy about that. The general reason for that is that 'it' is
usually used to refer to objects: things that aren't alive. But we often use it if we don't
know the gender of something. And, of course, because third person pronouns
are a complete pain in the ass, you need to change the verb after the third person pronoun.
In previous lessons you learned: I go, we go, you go. He goes.
With the third person singular pronouns, you need to add an 'S' or an 'S' sound to each
of the verbs. It works. She thinks. It poops.
This is one of the most common mistakes of beginner and advanced students so be careful!
Change those verbs. Now the plural subject form is 'they'.
And the plural object form is 'them'. In both the subject and object you just need
the single word. You don't need to remember gender.
It's only third person singular. So what about the verbs for the plural third
person pronouns? Well, what do you think? They.... go. They
... walk. The plural third person pronouns are the basic
form of the verb. Same as first person and second person pronouns.
Which means it's only the third person singular pronoun which changes the verb.
Now one final note about this is that, in recent years, many people want a pronoun that
doesn't indicate gender and while some people create new pronouns, none of those have really
caught on as popular. But something that has become common is using
the plural as a singular pronoun. If you're interested in more information,
please check out my video on this exact topic. So! As a quick review. The third person pronoun
refers to someone other than yourself, or the person you are talking to.
Third person singular pronouns have three forms: male, female and no gender.
You need to be careful with these for two reasons: 1. The subject and the object forms
will change. And 2. the verb form changes as well.
The third person plural is a little more simple. There's only subject and object position:
they and them. And it's becoming increasingly common to use
'they' in the singular when you don't know the gender of something. Or if the gender
doesn't matter. As always, if you have any questions, please
put them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this lesson and this series,
please subscribe. I love hearing from and meeting new students all the time.
And as always, I will see you and him and her and them next time!
[outro]