Indefinite pronouns — quelqu'un on chacun

In one line

on is the most-used pronoun in spoken French and it has three meanings — "one", "we", and "somebody".

The forms on this page

The table

tout le monde is singular, even though it means a group: Tout le monde est venu.

English does the same with "everybody" — "everybody is here", not "are" — so this one is free.

on — three meanings

Its verb is always third person singular, even when it means "we":

On est prêts. — not on sommes

But adjectives and participles can agree in the plural when the meaning is plural:

On est prêts. · On est allés au cinéma.

In everyday speech nous is almost never the subject. on has taken over. In formal writing it is the reverse.

This matters more than it looks, because English has no casual equivalent. English "one" is stiff and posh — "one does not do that" — so English speakers avoid it, and then avoid on too. on is not stiff in French; it is the ordinary, everyday word. On y va ? is what you actually say for "shall we go?" — and saying Nous y allons ? will sound like a textbook.

quelqu'un and quelque chose — and that de

When they take an adjective, de goes in between and the adjective stays masculine singular:

❌ quelque chose belle ✅ quelque chose de beau — even for a feminine thing, the adjective stays masculine.

English puts the adjective straight after — "something beautiful", "nothing serious" — with nothing in between. The de is the thing to remember to add.

And with an infinitive, à is used:

quelque chose à manger — something to eat rien à faire — nothing to be done

That half matches English exactly: "something to eat".

chacun — and its possessive

With chacun the stressed pronoun is soi, not lui — because the subject is indefinite. See pronoms-toniques.

personne and rien — and that ne

These two always come with ne, even when they are the subject:

But in a short answer, no ne:

— Qui est là ? — Personne. — Qu'est-ce que tu fais ? — Rien.

The detail is in negation-avancee.

n'importe — a family that turns up everywhere

C'est n'importe quoi ! in speech means "that's nonsense" — one of the most common colloquial phrases there is.

The whole family is English "any … at all", and like the English one it carries a shade of "it makes no difference which".

Examples

Common mistakes

Why on is singular but means "we"