Double Object Pronouns & Their Order
Double Object Pronouns & Their Order
English also juggles two object pronouns in one sentence ('he gave it to me'), but English pronouns simply stay in ordinary post-verb word order — French instead locks both pronouns into a strict pre-verb, five-column sequence that has to be learned as a table, since English gives you no built-in instinct for it.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
The five-column ordering table
Il me le donne. (He gives it to me.) — me (col. 1) before le (col. 2)
He gives it to me.
Before the verb, French object pronouns must appear in this order: (1) me/te/se/nous/vous, (2) le/la/les, (3) lui/leur, (4) y, (5) en. You pick at most one pronoun from each relevant column — you'd never say 'il me te le donne.' English has no equivalent clitic-attachment mechanism at all: 'he gives it to me' keeps both pronouns after the verb, with 'to' marking the indirect object, so this rigid pre-verb ordering has to be memorized as a table rather than derived from any English sentence structure you already know.
Why le lui, never lui le
Je le lui ai dit. (I told it to him/her.) — le (col. 2) before lui (col. 3)
I told it to him/her.
When both pronouns are third person, the direct object (le/la/les, column 2) always comes before the indirect object (lui/leur, column 3) — the reverse of columns 1 and 2, where the 1st/2nd-person pronoun comes first. By coincidence, English 'I told it to him' also places the direct object pronoun 'it' before the indirect 'him,' so this particular case happens to match English word order — but English itself is flexible in a way French never is ('he gave me it' and 'he gave it to me' are both fine in English), so don't rely on English order as a dependable guide for the other columns.
y and en slot in last
Il y en a. (There is some of it/them.) — y (col. 4) before en (col. 5)
There is some of it/them.
y and en come after any personal pronoun, and in that relative order to each other — y before en. Il y en a is one of the most common fixed phrases in French ('there's some'), and it's worth noting English has no compact single-phrase equivalent to y + en at all — 'there is some of it' takes far more words to say the same thing, so memorize il y en a as a fixed chunk rather than trying to build it from an English template.
The imperative flips the order
Donne-le-moi ! (Give it to me!) — verb + direct object + indirect object, with moi/toi replacing me/te
Give it to me!
In an affirmative command, the pronouns move after the verb (joined by hyphens) and swap order: direct object before indirect object, with me/te becoming the stressed forms moi/toi. Donne-le-moi (never 'donne-moi-le') happens to surface in the same order as English 'Give it to me!' — but that's a coincidence of this one example, not a reliable rule, since English has no clitic pronouns attaching to its verbs at all. In the negative imperative, French pronouns return to their normal pre-verb position and order: Ne me le donne pas !
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| Il me le donne. | eel muh luh DON | He gives it to me. |
| Je le lui ai dit. | zhuh luh lwee ay DEE | I told it to him. |
| Il nous les envoie. | eel noo lay zahn-VWAH | He sends them to us. |
| Je leur en parle. | zhuh luhr ahn PARL | I talk to them about it. |
| Il y en a beaucoup. | eel ee ahn ah boh-KOO | There's a lot of it. |
| Donne-le-moi ! | don-luh-MWAH | Give it to me! |
| Ne me le donne pas ! | nuh muh luh don PAH | Don't give it to me! |
| Elle se le rappelle. | el suh luh ra-PEL | She remembers it. |
| Tu me la montres ? | tew muh lah MOHN-truh | Will you show it to me? |
| Vous nous en parlerez. | voo noo zahn par-luh-RAY | You'll tell us about it. |