French Object Pronouns - Part 1 - Direct Object Pronouns

French Objects Pronouns - Part 2

A direct object is a noun that receives the action of a verb, such as the word "cookie" in the sentence, "I'm eating the cookie." It generally answers the question "what?" or "whom?" ("What am I eating? The cookie.") A direct object pronoun replaces the direct object when the latter is already implied. So instead of "I'm eating the cookie," you could just say, "I'm eating it."

The French direct object pronouns are:

me (me) nous (us)
te (you) vous (you)
le (him, it) les (them, masculine and feminine)
la (her, it)

Direct object pronouns have the same function in French as they do in English, with a few important distinctions. The most notable of these is that whereas in English the direct object always comes after the verb, in French it always comes before (except in the imperative, as we discussed in a previous lesson):

Ce livre me fascine.
This book fascinates me.

Quand un copain t'appelle pour son déménagement

When a friend calls you to help him with his move

Caption 4, Oldelaf - La Tristitude
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The third-person singular direct object pronouns (le and la) have the same gender as the noun they refer to:

Le silence tue la souffrance, l'émoi

Silence kills suffering, the struggle

L'entends-tu, est-ce que tu le vois?

Do you hear it, do you see it?

Captions 21-22, Indila - S.O.S.
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La tarte à l'oignon!

Onion tart!

-Ouais, comment vous la faites?

-Yeah, how do you make it?

-Je la fais pas, je l'achète.

-I don't make it, I buy it.

Captions 18-20, Actu Vingtième - Foire aux oignons
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In the first example, the le of le vois refers to le silence. In the second, the la of la faites/la fais refers to la tarte à l'oignon. Both examples demonstrate another rule that applies to all singular direct object pronouns (me, te, le, and la): when the verb that comes after the pronoun begins with a vowel or silent h, the e or a of the pronoun is dropped and is replaced with an apostrophe (this is known as elision). That's why you have l'achète instead of la achète, l'entends instead of le entends, and t'appelle instead of te appelle.

Again, this only applies to singular direct object pronouns. With the plural pronouns, all you have to think about is number agreement. In the following examples, les refers to both the masculine plural ils and the feminine plural les pommes, and it doesn't change before a verb beginning with a vowel:

À l'assemblée,

At the assembly,

ils ont reçu un prix qui les touche mais les concerne peu...

they received a prize that touches them but concerns them little...

Caption 25, Le Journal - Nouveaux artistes pluriculturels
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Est-ce que tu aimes les pommes?

Do you like apples?

-Non, je ne les aime pas.

-No, I don't like them.

The only other tricky aspect of French direct object pronouns occurs in the past tense (passé composé). If you have a feminine singular, feminine plural, or masculine plural direct object pronoun before a verb in the passé composé, you need to make sure that the past participle agrees in number and gender with the noun you're referring to:

Je n'ai pas les jouets. Je les ai oubliés.

I don't have the toys. I forgot them.

Mais si toutes ces technologies existent depuis si longtemps,

But if all these technologies have existed for so long,

pourquoi est-ce qu'on ne les a pas utilisées?

why haven't we used them?

Captions 3-4, Il était une fois - Notre Terre 25. Technologies
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The root (masculine singular) forms of the above past participles are oublié and utilisé. But since jouets is masculine plural, we need to add an s to oublié to make it plural (oubliés). And since technologies is feminine plural, we need to add an e to utilisé to make it feminine and an s to make it plural (utilisées).