Italian pronouns: every type, explained with charts

Pronouns are small words, and Italian uses them far more often than English does. Once you see them organized by type, the fog clears quickly.

What Italian pronouns are (I pronomi)

A pronoun is the little word that takes the place of a noun so you do not have to repeat it. Instead of compro il pane e porto il pane a casa (I buy the bread and I take bread home), we say compro il pane e lo porto a casa (I buy the bread and I take it home). The noun pane appears once, and lo does the work the second time.

One structural difference from English is worth fixing in your head on day one: Italian puts the pronoun before the verb. English says “I call him”, Italian says Lo chiamo. (I call him). Fix that order first, and the rest of these charts becomes a matter of choosing the right word rather than placing it.

Here is every set of Italian pronouns, one chart each, in the order you will meet them. After the charts come the questions my students actually ask in class, the ones about choosing between two words that look almost identical. The sets below are the personal pronouns (pronomi personali), which include the subject, object, reflexive and stressed forms.

Subject pronouns (I pronomi personali soggetto)

Person	Italian	English
1st singular	io	I
2nd singular	tu	you
3rd singular	lui / lei	he / she
3rd singular formal	Lei	you, formal
1st plural	noi	we
2nd plural	voi	you all
3rd plural	loro	they

The subject pronoun is usually left out, because the verb ending already says who is doing the action. Parlo italiano. (I speak Italian) is a complete sentence, and adding io is not more correct, only more emphatic. Io parlo italiano, tu parli inglese. (I speak Italian, you speak English) uses both pronouns to make the contrast, which is what the subject pronoun does in Italian: it adds emphasis.

You will also meet egli, ella, esso and essa in books. They are the older literary forms of lui, lei and it. Recognize them, and use lui, lei and loro when you speak.

That is my own lesson on the subject pronouns, if you would rather hear the set out loud before moving on.

Direct object pronouns (I pronomi diretti)

A direct object is the person or thing the verb acts on directly, the answer to chi? (who?) or che cosa? (what?) with no preposition in front of it.

Singular	English	Plural	English
mi	me	ci	us
ti	you	vi	you all
lo (l’)	him, it	li	them (m.)
la (l’)	her, it	le	them (f.)
La	you (formal)

Compro il pane e lo porto a casa. (I buy the bread and take it home)

Conosci Anna? Sì, la conosco bene. (Do you know Anna? Yes, I know her well)

Hai visto i ragazzi? Sì, li ho visti ieri. (Have you seen the boys? Yes, I saw them yesterday)

Three details keep a sentence right.

The gender comes from the noun, not from English. There is no separate word for “it”: a masculine thing takes lo, a feminine thing takes la. Il libro becomes lo, la borsa becomes la.

Lo and la shorten to l’ before a vowel or an h. La borsa? L’ho lasciata in macchina. (The bag? I left it in the car). The plural li and le never shorten.

With the passato prossimo, the past participle agrees with the pronoun. Li ho visti ieri. (I saw them yesterday), not li ho visto.

Indirect object pronouns (I pronomi indiretti)

An indirect object is the person or thing the action is directed to. It answers the questions a chi? (to whom?) or a che cosa? (to what?). In the full sentence it carries the preposition a, and the pronoun replaces both the preposition and the noun.

Singular	English	Plural	English
mi	to me	ci	to us
ti	to you	vi	to you all
gli	to him	gli	to them
le	to her
Le	to you (formal)

Le regalo i fiori. (I am giving her the flowers)

Gli telefono ogni domenica. (I call him every Sunday)

Gli ho dato i libri. (I gave them the books)

Two things surprise learners here. First, gli does double duty: it means “to him” and also “to them” in modern speech. The older loro still exists (dico loro, I tell them) and sounds formal or written, so you will hear gli far more often. Second, Le with a capital letter is the formal you, the pronoun you use with a stranger, a shopkeeper or a doctor: Le posso offrire un caffè? (May I offer you a coffee?).

The forms mi, ti, ci and vi appear in both charts. They are the same word in both sets.

Direct or indirect pronoun? How to choose it

This is the question I answer most often in class: How can I understand if the direct or the indirect pronoun is required in a sentence? My answer: use the dictionary. I suggest my students use Internazionale’s dictionary, because it offers useful examples and stays concise and simple.

Let’s imagine I need to find out how to complete the following phrases:

(Talking about a woman): ___ telefono.

(Talking about a woman): ___ vedo.

Check the dictionary page for telefonare; you will spot the example telefonare a qcn (to call someone). The presence of a makes me understand that the verb telefonare needs an indirect connection. Telefonare a chi? a Maria, so

Telefono a Maria. (I call Maria) becomes Le telefono. (I call her), with an indirect pronoun

Check the dictionary page for vedere. The page is long, with lots of examples, but they all go in the same direction, and since the first one is vedere una luce (to see a light), you can understand that the connection is direct. Vedere cosa? una luce. Vedere chi? Maria, so

Vedo Maria. (I see Maria) becomes La vedo. (I see her), with a direct pronoun

Same Maria, two different pronouns, because telefonare is built with a and vedere is built without it. English says “I call her” in both cases, and that is where the confusion starts.

Very important: never rely on English to decide something in Italian; here, whether an Italian verb needs a direct or an indirect connection. The two languages often disagree, as we just saw in the “to call / to see” example. So learn the preposition with the verb, and the pronoun follows on its own:

The verb takes a (indirect)	The verb takes nothing (direct)
telefonare a, to call	vedere, to see
rispondere a, to answer	ascoltare, to listen to
scrivere a, to write to	aiutare, to help
piacere a, to be pleasing to	cercare, to look for
chiedere a, to ask	aspettare, to wait for

Le rispondo subito. (I answer her right away)

Ti ascolto. (I am listening to you)

Lo cerco da stamattina. (I have been looking for him since this morning)

Reflexive pronouns (I pronomi riflessivi)

Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject and the object are the same person: mi lavo I wash myself, si preparano they get themselves ready.

Singular	English	Plural	English
mi	myself	ci	ourselves
ti	yourself	vi	yourselves
si	himself, herself, itself	si	themselves

The equivalence between an Italian reflexive verb and “-self” (myself, yourself, etc.) in English is a simplistic rule, useful to beginners only as a way to understand the concept, and, as I said before, we can’t rely on any English structure to explain fully what is going on in Italian. In fact, there are many Italian verbs that are reflexive and have no connection with “-self”:

Si chiama Marco. (His name is Marco, lit. He calls himself Marco)

Mi sveglio alle sette. (I wake up at seven, lit. I wake myself up at seven)

Ci vediamo domani! (See you tomorrow!)

You will meet the same si in a few other jobs: it makes a verb reciprocal (Si amano. They love each other) and impersonal (Qui si parla italiano. Italian spoken here). The impersonal si belongs in a different lesson; here we’re focusing only on reflexive verbs.

ci and ne in short

Two little words have a lesson of their own: ci, which replaces a noun with a, in, da or su (Ci penso spesso, I often think about it), and ne, which does the same with di and stands in for quantities (Ne voglio due, I want two of them).

They are the two I am asked about most, and the full lesson with the chart and the worked pairs is in ci and ne in Italian.

The rule to carry with you: ne covers di, everything else is ci.

Double pronouns (I pronomi combinati)

When a sentence has both an indirect and a direct pronoun, they combine into one word. The indirect one comes first, and the two of them change shape.

	lo	la	li	le	ne
mi	me lo	me la	me li	me le	me ne
ti	te lo	te la	te li	te le	te ne
gli / le	glielo	gliela	glieli	gliele	gliene
ci	ce lo	ce la	ce li	ce le	ce ne
vi	ve lo	ve la	ve li	ve le	ve ne

Me lo dai? (Will you give it to me?)

Glielo dico domani. (I will tell him tomorrow)

Ce ne sono tre. (There are three of them)

Three changes happen in that chart. Mi, ti, ci and vi become me, te, ce and ve when a second pronoun follows. Gli and le join the next pronoun as one word starting with glie-, which is why gli plus lo gives glielo rather than gli lo. And the past participle agrees with the direct pronoun: Me le ha date ieri. (He gave them to me yesterday).

Where the pronoun goes (La posizione dei pronomi)

The default position is before the conjugated verb, and non goes before the pronoun: Non lo chiamo. (I am not calling him).

Four situations move the pronoun to the end of the verb instead:

Voglio vederlo. (I want to see him) with the pronoun attached to the infinitive, final -e dropped

Vedendolo, ho capito tutto. (Seeing him, I understood everything) attached to the gerund

Chiamalo subito! (Call him right now!) attached to the affirmative imperative

Eccolo! (Here he is!) attached to ecco

With a modal verb you have both options and they mean the same thing: lo voglio vedere and voglio vederlo are equally correct.

Two more details matter in speech. The negative tu imperative accepts either position (Non mi toccare! and Non toccarmi! are both fine), while the formal Lei command keeps the pronoun in front: Me lo dica. (Tell me). And a handful of short imperatives double the first consonant of the pronoun: da’ plus mi gives dammi (give me), di’ plus mi gives dimmi (tell me), fa’ plus lo gives fallo (do it), va’ plus ci gives vacci (go there).

Stressed pronouns (I pronomi tonici)

The forms me, te, lui, lei, noi, voi and loro do two jobs: they follow a preposition, and they carry emphasis.

Vieni con me? (Are you coming with me?)

Questo regalo è per te. (This present is for you)

A me piace il caffè, a lui il tè. (I like coffee, he likes tea)

Secondo me, hai ragione. (In my opinion, you are right)

Notice that io becomes me and tu becomes te after a preposition, and that a me piace means the same as mi piace: the stressed form adds weight rather than changing the sense. Reach for these when you want to insist, contrast or name the person explicitly, and keep the short forms for ordinary sentences.

The pronouns you mostly need to recognize

Three more sets appear in reading long before you need to produce them.

Relative pronouns connect two clauses. che covers both people and things (Il libro che leggo, the book I am reading), and cui follows a preposition (La persona di cui parlo, the person I am talking about). The longer il quale, la quale, i quali, le quali mean the same as che or cui and sound more formal.

Demonstrative pronouns point at things: questo (this one) and quello (that one), with four endings each, questa, questi, queste and quella, quelli, quelle.

Possessive pronouns keep the article and stand in for the noun they replace: Il mio è nuovo, il tuo è vecchio. (Mine is new, yours is old). They change for gender and number like any other adjective, il mio, la mia, i miei, le mie, and they have their own lesson in this series.

Every pronoun on one page

Here is the whole system as a single cheat sheet lookup, in case you want one table instead of nine.

Person	Subject	Direct	Indirect	Reflexive	Stressed
I	io	mi	mi	mi	me
you	tu	ti	ti	ti	te
he	lui	lo	gli	si	lui
she	lei	la	le	si	lei
you (formal)	Lei	La	Le	si	Lei
we	noi	ci	ci	ci	noi
you all	voi	vi	vi	vi	voi
they	loro	li / le	gli	si	loro

And the two special ones, which replace a preposition together with its noun:

Pronoun	Replaces	Means
ci	a, in, da, su + noun	there, about it
ne	di, da + noun, quantities	of it, of them, some

How to practice

Take a sentence you already know and swap one noun for one pronoun, out loud. Compro il pane becomes lo compro. Telefono a Marco becomes gli telefono. Three sentences a day, and the pronoun stops being a decision.

Then say the pairs that confuse you side by side, because the ear settles what the chart cannot: lo vedo and le telefono, ci credo and me ne ricordo, me lo dai and glielo dico. Say the master grid out loud once a week, and the sets stop blurring into each other.

Try it yourself

You have each set of pronouns and where they go. Here are six sentences to test them on. Pick a pronoun and you get the reason either way.

Want a Hand?

You now know which pronoun to use. The next step is saying it at speed, inside a real sentence, without stopping to check the table. That is what a lesson is for: you speak, I catch the wrong pronoun while the sentence is still in the air, and we fix it there instead of on paper.

Book a free trial lesson and we will practice with sentences about things that are relevant to your life and tastes.