Visualizing choosing pronouns

[subtle barn]

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<Visualizing choosing pronouns>

Visualizing choosing pronouns

[woven frigate]

couple things:

• I think the way you added "lui/leur" as an afterthought is a bit weird and doesn't reflect the way French grammar works – for instance, "me" is both a direct and indirect object while "le" can only be a direct object and "lui" (as an object pronoun) can only be an indirect object
• I generally have a hard time with the way you've written things, so I'm not always sure what you mean
• for "en Place" (like, "en France" is my guess...?) it would be replaced with "y"

my overall impression is that you're making this more complicated than it needs to be, while simultaneously simplifying some important distinctions…
perhaps that will work for you as a learning tool, but as someone for whom these pronouns are now quite intuitive, your chart mostly confused me

[tame walrus]

Also, what is « verbe de » ?

The thing you're replacing is not the verb but the object that is governed by « de »

Are you talking about like, « J'ai besoin d'y aller » becoming « J'en ai besoin » ? That belongs more with the noun category because anything under « de » or « à », even if they represent a noun clause, can be replaced with « en » and « y » respectively.
J'ai besoin du truc dont tu parles => J'en ai besoin
Je suis arrivé à faire ce que tu voulais => J'y suis arrivé

[mint nacelle]

I appreciate the feedback.

• I read one lesson explaining how to use the selfish donkey rule to remember the order, and I think that might have flattened direct and indirect object pronouns too much in my head. I'm having a hard time with the same term having multiple grammatical meanings
• Thanks for pointing out the en Place mistake. I think that misunderstanding lead me to have to trying to diagram it

[mint nacelle]

As you can see, I'm having the most trouble with Y and en. Thanks for giving that example, I realize that's how I was understanding it beforehand, but I must have made some mistakes in my notes. I'll see if I can wrap my head around it in a simpler way..

for anyone that was going to help, no need! I'll likely be abandoning this 😄

[tame walrus]

I would probably group it first into person vs object (or animate/inanimate) as that's the first question to solve

In person, you'd make a distinction between direct and indirect only with the third: le/la/les and lui/leur

In object, that's where you put everything else

I'd fold 'place' into 'noun' because places are essentially indirect inanimate objects

All you need to care about is « de » versus everything else

Because in French, we distinguish between going to somewhere and being at somewhere (je vais au parc / je suis au parc), and leaving from somewhere (je pars du parc)

[mint nacelle]

All you need to care about is « de » versus everything else

Well I think you've just helped me replace this diagram! Actually

[tame walrus]

If you're learning countries and the prepositions they take, the « en » thing is just a special case for singular feminine and vowel-initial countries :
Je suis en Chine
Je suis en Afghanistan

The standard expression uses « à » :
Je suis à Paris
Je suis au Brésil
Je suis aux États-Unis
Wherein you'd have « à » plus the article of the country. Cities, not having gender, would not then have articles and thus have a bare « à ».