A Guide To Learn English Language

For the proper usage of Eng­lish gram­mar we need the knowl­edge of dif­fer­ent kinds of per­sons. These per­sons are use­ful in deter­min­ing who is speak­ing, being spo­ken to or being spo­ken. There are three dif­fer­ent kinds of per­sons and they are first, sec­ond and third per­sons. Let us know more about dif­fer­ent kinds of per­sons and how these are used.

Per­sonal Pronouns:

Per­sonal pro­nouns are a kind of pro­nouns which are used to spec­ify a per­son, place, object or a thing.

A per­son in Eng­lish lan­guage deter­mines whether is speak­ing, or being spo­ken to, or being spo­ken about in a sen­tence. This is sim­ply what a ‘per­son’ is. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion of per­sons enables for the bet­ter ways of pre­sen­ta­tion for the speaker and nar­ra­tion for the author.

The per­sonal pro­nouns can be clas­si­fied as under 3 categories.

In Eng­lish, we have 3 persons.

• The First per­son, who speaks the statement
• Sec­ond per­son, to the state­ment is being spo­ken to.
• Third per­son, about whom the state­ment is being spoken.

Exam­ples:

First per­son: I run 1 mile every­day in the morning.

My roomy has been sick for a week

Here, the per­son is speak­ing some­thing. Hence, it is a first per­son. Pro­nouns such as I, we, me, us, my, mine, our, and ours are in the first person.

Sec­ond per­son: Your cre­ation is so amusing.

You seem so depressed today.

Here, the sen­tence is being said to the per­son. Thus, it is in sec­ond per­son. The pro­nouns in a sec­ond per­son are namely you, your, yours.

Note: It is not always a rule that the pres­ence of a respec­tive pro­noun in the sen­tence deter­mined the per­son of the sen­tence. This rule is invalid mostly in inter­rog­a­tive sentences.

Why did you cheat me?

Though this sen­tence seems to be in first per­son, but is actu­ally in sec­ond sen­tence. Because, the per­son in the sen­tence here is actu­ally being asked. It is like the ques­tion is reflected on the very per­son itself.

Third per­son: The boy is so fond of chocolates.

His genius is incredible.

Here, the first two per­sons talk about the third per­son, who is com­pletely not related to the dis­cus­sion. Hence, it is in third per­son. A sen­tence in the third per­son con­tains pro­nouns namely he, him, his, she, her, hers, it they, them, their, theirs, its.

The impor­tant appli­ca­tion of the per­sons is in find­ing whether the verb is to be used sin­gu­lar or plural in a sen­tence. The table below exactly helps in iden­ti­fy­ing that.