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I have been studying pronominal verbs in French which have three categories:

  1. Reflexive verbs
  2. Reciprocal verbs
  3. Idiomatic pronomial verbs

However, I do not understand sentences such as "il m'a dit". The subject "il" does not agree with the reflexive pronoun "me"...

My questions are:

  1. Why don't we write the above sentence as "il dit a moi"?

  2. Can you please explain, when exactly one uses reflexive pronouns "me, te, se, nous, vous, se" in the French language?

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  • Accusative, dative and reflexive pronouns are only distinguished in the third person: le, lui, se / la, lui, se / les, leur, se. For the other person, there's only form of the weak pronoun: "Il me disait courageux" (me: direct object pronoun); "Il me disait quelque chose" (me: indirect object pronoun); "Je me disais quelque chose" (me: reflexive pronoun).
    – Eau qui dort
    May 27, 2018 at 15:33

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Maybe take a look at these :

As far as I know (as native speaker not specialist) it's not a reflexive pronoun here, but a direct/indirect object pronoun, that replace the object.

  • indirect

    • Elles donnent à moi => elle me donnent
    • Nous donnons à elle => Nous lui donnons

  • direct

    • Tu vois lui => tu le vois
    • J'emmène eux => je les emmène

French language uses these replacements when the object is a pronoun (don't know exactly why, just a rule learned at school ;) )

If other situations, you can say :

  • Tu vois le bar
  • Ils boivent des bières

But, it's also a trick not to repeat an object that you are talking about :

  • La bière est servie. Tu la bois.
  • and not : La bière est servie. Tu bois la bière.

Note that a reflective pronoun is often used with an object pronoun :

  • Je m'envoie une lettre => Je me l'envoie
  • Je donne une bière à lui => Je la lui donne

(In these two last examples, "bière" and "lettre" are already known in the discussion.)

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  • Can you please explain to me why don't we say for example "j'aimes toi" instead of "je t'aimes" in French?
    – fja
    May 28, 2018 at 14:43
  • Don't have enough skills in linguistic to do that but wiki does ;) Look at this (in french) fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/… It's about "clitic" (i've learned a word today) : "A proclitic appears before its host.[2] It is common in Romance languages. For example, in French, there is "il s'est réveillé" ("he woke up"), or "je t'aime" ("I love you"). " [quoted from here : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitic]
    – G.P
    May 28, 2018 at 15:36
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Si on dit

Le fils de Pierre est arrivé. La femme de George est morte.

on ne dit jamais

Le fils de lui est arrivé. La femme de lui est morte.

Un pronom personnel ne s'emploie pas comme complément d'un nom déterminé par l'article. Il faut dire

Son fils est arrivé. Sa femme est morte.

Le déterminant son s'appelle déterminant possessif. Il exprime un rapport de possession.

C'est mon chapeau, ma valise; ton chapeau, ta valise; son chapeau; sa valise.

Son chapeau peut se traduire comme his hat or her hat.

Ce sont mes chapeaux, mes valises; tes chapeaux, tes valises; ses chapeau; ses valises.

C'est notre chapeau, notre valise; votre chapeau, votre valise; leur chapeau; leur valise.

Ce sont nos chapeaux, nos valises; vos chapeaux, vos valises; leurs chapeau; leurs valises.

Pour bien distinguer on peut dire

C'est son chapeau à lui (his hat). C'est son chapeau à elle (her hat).

On emploie mon, ton, son devant les noms ou les adjectifs commençant par une voyelle ou un h muet.

Mon amie, son habitude, mon étrange mésaventure, ton heureuse copine.

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