What Is First Person? (with Examples)

What Is First Person? (with Examples)

The term first person refers to the speaker himself or a group that includes the speaker (i.e., I, me, we, and us).

The personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they) are grouped into one of three categories: Note: Second person refers to the speaker's audience (i.e., you). Third person refers to everybody else (e.g., he, him, she, her, it, they, them), including all other nouns (e.g., Craig, Germans, ant, mice).

Examples of First Person Pronouns in Different Cases

Here are the first person pronouns in the subjective case, the objective case, and the possessive case:

PersonSubjective CaseObjective CasePossessive Case
Possessive Adjective		Possessive Case
Absolute Possessive Pronouns
First Person Singular I

Example: I like cheese.		 me

Example: He likes me.		 my

Example: This is my car.		 mine

This is mine.
First Person Plural we

Example: We hate celery. 		us

Example: They hate us. 		our

Example: This is our house. 		ours

Example: This is ours.

First, Second, and Third Person Pronouns

The table below shows the first, second, and third person pronouns. The first person pronouns are shaded.

PersonSubjective CaseObjective CasePossessive Case
Possessive Adjective		Possessive Case
Absolute Possessive Pronouns
First Person Singular I me my mine
Second Person Singular you you your yours
Third Person Singular he/she/it him/her/it his/her/its his/hers/its
First Person Plural we us our ours
Second Person Plural you you your yours
Third Person Plural they them their theirs
Interactive Exercise
Here are three randomly selected questions from a larger exercise, which can be edited and printed to create exercise worksheets.

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See Also

What are personal pronouns? What is the second person? What is the third person? What is the subjective case? What is the objective case? What is the possessive case? What are possessive adjectives? What are absolute possessive pronouns? The different types of pronouns Glossary of grammatical terms