I know, I know. It’s complicated, and maybe impossible. A lot needs to change to make this easy, and I’m certainly in no position to revolutionize the French language.

I need to add French pronouns to my email signature. I don’t necessarily need to use them, but ideally I could explain to someone how to use them in a sentence.

“Iel” isn’t perfect, but it’s the most popular right now. That’s good enough for me.

I’m confused about the rest. Can anyone give me guidance on the most popular Iel equivalent of [il/le/lui] and [elle/la/elle]?

Is there a good website where I can see the pronouns in use, that isn’t a style guide about pronouns?

Thanks for stopping by :)

  • alex [they, il]
    4•10 months ago

    Hi! We actually tend more to use il, elle and iel, rather than il/lui, elle/elle, and iel/iel, because as you can see from this sentence, it’s pretty useless to add the accusative form which only changes for “il”. For instance, my email signature and what I have here only references il. For convenience I put they, il here, but in my email signature I have: “they/them, il”.

    • alex [they, il]
      2•10 months ago

      And yes, non-binary options in English are underwhelming to say the least, which is why I use il and not a neutral alternative :(

      • krimsonbunEnglish
        4•10 months ago

        English is pretty good when it comes to nonbinary/gender neutral language compared to French, right? I mean neopronouns aren’t that unheard of and we still have They/them being grammatically accepted

        • alex [they, il]English
          3•10 months ago

          Yep, and your grammar is largely ungendered. Our nouns and adjectives almost all are, so it’s really hard to avoid gendering people too.

          • krimsonbunEnglish
            3•10 months ago

            Spanish has the same problem. Even if a word is gender neutral (e.g. president) you still have to use a gendered pronoun for it. And some politicians are even trying to mske that word, one of the few that are not gendered, be gendered.

    • communication [they]OPEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      Thank you SO much for your answers here! And for writing that awesome Wikipedia page, which I somehow hadn’t seen before. A few follow up questions, if you don’t mind:

      1. I found a dropdown somewhere with [iel/iel/iel]. This is a mistake, right? “Je iel connais” feels wrong. It should be something like “Je lae connais”?
      2. You may have answered this already, but what’s a good way to present my pronouns that says "I prefer non-binary, but I don’t want to torture you so feel free to use il or elle? Something like [iel ou il, lui, le]? Useful point about accusative being unneccessary, but I’m in a situation where other people are adding it so I think I probably need to include it…
      • alex [they, il]English
        4•10 months ago
        1. Definitely wrong!
        2. I’d say (iel préféré, elle/il acceptés) might do the trick?