18.2 - Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns refer to the people or things appearing in speech or written texts. The nominative of these was introduced on page 4.4, but you will have come across other forms in subsequent units, as it would be almost impossible to present authentic examples and reading texts without including personal pronouns. As in English (I, me, she, her, we, our, us etc.), Ukrainian personal pronouns tend to have more than one stem, so it is important to learn the forms.
| Nom.1 | я | ти 2 | він | воно | вона | ми | ви 2 | вони |
| I | you (familiar/ singular) |
he | it | she | we | you (formal/ plural) |
they | |
| Gen. | мене | тебе | його/нього 3 | її/неї 3 | нас | вас | їх/них 3 | |
| Dat. | мені | тобі | йому | їй | нам | вам | їм | |
| Acc. | мене | тебе | його/нього 3 | її/неї 3 | нас | вас | їх/них 3 | |
| Instr. | мною | тобою | ним | нею | нами | вами | ними | |
| Loc. | ньому (нім) | ній | нас | вас | них | |||
1 Personal pronouns in the nominative are frequently omitted if there is no ambiguity as to the doer of the action (the verb ending frequently supplies this information).
2 In correspondence and when addressing someone directly in writing, upper case letters are predominantly used for Ти and Ви.
3 When його/її/їх are used with a preposition, they change to нього/неї/них, e.g. до нього (to him), про неї (about her); this does not apply, however, when його/її/їх function as possessive pronouns, e.g. в його руках (in his hands), до її батьків (to her parents), as the preposition applies to the noun, and not to the possessive pronoun.
Two interesting uses of personal pronouns:
- мені used for emphasis (normally in speech) as, for example:
| Щоб ти мені вже більше такого не робив! | Don't you dare do this again! |
- in a compound phrase where a singular pronoun is associated with a plural one, to suggest togetherness, as in:
| ми з тобою | all (both) of us together, us and you, me and you |