What Are Impersonal Pronouns?
Impersonal pronouns are used to talk about people in general without mentioning who they are without identifying them.
English Impersonal Pronouns
We have three impersonal pronouns in the English language:
One
We use 'one' to talk about people in general or for unidentified/unknown things.
We use 'one' for singular nouns and 'ones' for plural nouns:
When Do We Use 'One'?
We use 'one' and 'ones' after:
- Definite article 'the'
- 'Which' in questions
- Some adjectives
Matthew is the
Which
Matthew is the fat
You
When we use 'you' to refer to people in general in informal contexts, it is called 'impersonal you' or 'generic you.' It refers to anyone or everyone. In these cases, 'you' has the same meaning as 'people':
If
In this example, 'you' has the same meaning as 'people.'
They
We use 'they' to talk about a group of people, such as an authority, an institution, a company, etc. In these sentences, 'they' refers to people in general.
When we do not want to mention the gender of a person, we use the third-person plural pronouns 'they'. It is called singular they.
If