In French, pronouns are inflected to indicate their role in the sentence (subject, direct object, and so on), as well as to reflect the person, gender, and number of their referents.
Personal pronouns
French has a complex system of personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, they, and so on). When compared to English, the particularities of French personal pronouns include: a T-V distinction in the second person singular (familiar tu vs. polite vous) the placement of object pronouns before the verb: « Agnès les voit. » ("Agnès sees them.") the existence of distinct pronouns for indirect objects and for certain prepositional objects the use of a distinct disjunctive form, e.g. for emphasis (moi, toi, etc.).
The three types of "you" in French
There are two words for you but they cover three distinct cases:
Singular "you": "Tu" is used to address someone informally. Singular "you": "Vous" is used to address someone formally. Plural "you": "Vous" is also used to address (formally or informally) two or more people.
Possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns refer to an object (or person) by identifying its possessor. They lexically indicate the person and number of the possessor, and like other pronouns they are inflected to indicate the gender and number of their referent. This is a key difference from English: in English, possessive pronouns are inflected to indicate the gender and number of their antecedent — e.g., in "the tables are his", the form "his" indicates that the antecedent (the possessor) is masculine singular, whereas in the French les tables sont les siennes, "siennes" or its base form "sien" indicates that the antecedent is third person singular but of unspecified gender while the inflection "-nes" indicates that the possessed noun "table" is feminine plural.
In French, the possessive pronouns are determined by the definite article le, la, les ("the"), depending on the gender and number of their referent; nonetheless, they are considered pronouns.
The following table lists the possessive pronouns by the possessor they indicate:
Examples: « Est-ce que c'est ta fleur ou la mienne ? » ("Is this your flower or mine?") « Je parle à mon frère pendant que tu parles au tien. » ("I am talking to my brother while you are talking to yours.")
The term "possessive pronoun" is also sometimes applied to the possessive determiners ("my", "your", etc.), which are discussed at French articles and determiners.
Interrogative pronouns
Like English, French has a number of different interrogative pronouns. They are organized here by the English pronoun to which they correspond:
What: As the direct object of a verb, que (or qu before a vowel or mute "h") is used in front of the verb: « Que faites-vous ? » ("What are you doing?") Also as the direct object of a verb, quest-ce que (or quest-ce qu before a vowel or mute "h") is used, without subject-auxiliary inversion. This phrase is analysed as a single word: « Quest-ce que vous faites ? » ("What is it that you are doing?") As the object of a preposition, or after the verb, quoi is used: « Après quoi aboie-t-il ? » ("At what is it barking?"), « Vous faites quoi ? » ("You are doing what?") There is no indirect-object form; rather, a full prepositional phrase (with quoi) is used: « À quoi pensez-vous ? » ("About what are you thinking?") As the subject form, quest-ce qui is used, without inversion: « Quest-ce qui vous dérange ? » ("What is it that bothers you?") Who, whom: As the subject or direct object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition, qui is used: « Qui vous dérange ? » ("Who bothers you?") There is no indirect-object form; rather, a full prepositional phrase (with qui) is used: « À qui avez-vous donné cela ? » ("To whom did you give that?") Similarly to qu'est-ce qui or qu'est-ce que above, qui est-ce qui or qui est-ce que can also be used when referring to a person rather than a thing: « Qui est-ce qui vous dérange ? » — « À qui est-ce que vous avez donné cela ? » — « Qui est-ce qu'il a vu ? » (Whom did he see?) Which, which one(s): The basic form is lequel (le + quel; see French articles and determiners for information about each component). Both parts of lequel are inflected to agree with its referent in gender and number: hence, laquelle, lesquels, lesquelles. The prepositions à and de contract with le and les to form au, aux, du, and des, respectively; this is still the case here. Thus, for example, auxquelles means "at/to which ones" (feminine), and duquel means "of/from which one" (masculine).
For more information on the formation of questions, see French grammar.