Adverbial Pronouns

The little words 'en' and 'y' make a big difference

Jan 26, 2025

Adverbial pronouns can be daunting - are they pronouns or are they adverbs, and what exactly do they do? In fact, the little words y and en pack a ton of meaning, and using them can make the difference between good and great French. 💬

Today's issue of Lawless French à fond takes an in-depth look at adverbial pronouns and how they work with other parts of speech.

Lessons

🎬 As always, let's start with the basics: What are adverbial pronouns?

There are two, en and y, and despite their tiny size, they are vital to effective communication. After reading the introduction, take a look at the detailed lessons:

En lesson
Expressions with en
Y lesson
Expressions with y

Once you feel comfortable with adverbial pronouns, you need to know that there are other types of pronouns that often work with them:

Object pronouns
Reflexive pronouns

In addition to knowing how 📜 to use these pronouns, you need to know where 🧭 to use them, so that's where these two lessons come in:

Pronoun placement - Where do adverbial and object pronouns go in different kinds of sentences?

Double pronoun order - When a sentence has two pronouns, which one comes first?

Quiz Time

See how you do with adverbial pronouns in these fill-in-the-blanks quizzes.

À la salle de jeux vidéos

Le village d'Iseltwald en Suisse

PwLF adverbial pronoun super list
Consider this a perpetual quiz: you can click the "test your knowledge" button to take a new test as many times as you like.