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 :)

  •  communication [they]   ( @communication@beehaw.org ) 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…