Strong Pronouns after Prepositions

After a preposition, Catalan normally uses a strong, stressed pronoun: amb mi “with me,” per tu “for you,” sense ella “without her.” These forms behave like complete noun phrases after the preposition. They do not lean on the verb, and they are not attached with apostrophes or hyphens.

English uses object forms after prepositions (with me, not with I), but only the Catalan first-person singular visibly changes: subject jo becomes prepositional mi. The third-person reflexive si adds a distinction English expresses with himself, herself, itself, or themselves.

The basic paradigm

These are strong forms because they can bear contrastive stress: No ho faig per *ell; ho faig per tu*. The preposition selects the phrase, while the pronoun identifies the person.

The same form follows a simple or compound preposition: de mi, sense mi, davant de mi, a prop de mi. With de, the apostrophe belongs to the preposition before a vowel-initial form: d'ell, d'ella, d'ells, d'elles. The pronoun itself has not been shortened.

Replacing a full noun phrase

A strong pronoun can replace a person-denoting noun phrase while preserving the preposition:

amb la Marta → amb ella

The preposition amb survives because it expresses companionship. You cannot replace the phrase with bare ella after the verb: hi vaig ella is ungrammatical.

Strong phrases occur with finite and nonfinite verbs alike:

In the second sentence, amb ells complements the infinitive parlar. It stays a separate phrase: never parlar-amb-ells. Hyphens attach certain weak pronouns to nonfinite verbs, not strong prepositional phrases.

A mi and emphasis with a weak pronoun

When a strong phrase is added for contrast or topic, Catalan often also keeps the corresponding weak pronoun next to the verb. The strong phrase answers “specifically whom?”; the weak pronoun fills the verb's ordinary object slot.

Here a mi and a ella are stressed topics. M' and li are the weak indirect-object pronouns required by agradar. English uses subject word order—“I like”—but Catalan literally structures the experience more like “To me, getting up early is pleasing.”

The postposed strong phrases contrast the recipients. The weak forms els and m' remain. Learning only the English word order leads learners to omit these clitics or to treat mi as the subject.

A strong personal pronoun can also occur in a focused direct-object phrase with a: M'han convidat a mi, no a ell. This limited personal a is licensed by the tonic pronoun and contrast. It does not mean that every human direct object takes a; the full boundary is covered on animate objects and the limited personal a.

Strong phrase versus en or hi

Catalan can replace many prepositional complements with the weak pronouns en or hi. The choice depends on the governing preposition and on discourse status, not simply on whether the English translation says “him” or “her.”

In the first example, en packages the already active de-complement. In the second, d'ella and de tu are contrastive and therefore remain full stressed phrases. English uses ordinary object pronouns in both cases; Catalan distinguishes a weak anaphoric complement from an independently stressed one.

Similarly, Penso en la proposta → Hi penso uses hi, while Penso en ella, no en ell keeps strong pronouns for contrast. You cannot solve this system by deleting en or hi because English has no matching word. See en for de-complements and hi for prepositional complements.

Reflexive si

Si is a third-person reflexive strong pronoun: it refers back to the subject of its clause. It does not show gender or number, so mateix often follows and carries agreement.

Compare per a ella: that normally points to some contextually identified woman and does not force her to be the subject. La directora va reservar una còpia per a ella can therefore mean that the director reserved it for another woman. Si mateixa removes that ambiguity.

In (formal, academic) prose, entre si is common for reciprocal relations among things or members of a set:

With people in ordinary speech, entre ells/elles is often more natural: Els veïns ho van decidir entre ells. There is genuine overlap here; entre si is not wrong, but it can sound more abstract.

Si is only third person. For first and second person, use the ordinary strong forms: Ho guardo per a mi; ho fas per a tu; ho preparem per a nosaltres.

The special coordination entre tu i jo

The standard expression is entre tu i jo, with subject-form jo, when coordinated pronouns name the participants together. This is a genuine exception to the usual preposition + mi pattern and must be learned as a unit.

The same subject form appears in broader coordination where the whole coordinated phrase follows the preposition: Ho repartiran entre la Núria, tu i jo. Do not “correct” it mechanically to entre tu i mi in the standard model taught here.

Regional use of jo after prepositions

(regional: Balearic, Northern, and some Northwestern speech; informal) jo may appear where the general standard uses mi: amb jo, per jo, de jo. These are genuine dialect forms, not random mistakes. The broad interregional and formal model remains amb mi, per mi, de mi.

Do not mix the dialectal form casually into a Central-standard sentence. Conversely, recognizing amb jo matters when listening to Balearic or Northern speakers. Pronunciation can also reduce the final consonant of amb in speech, but standard spelling remains amb mi, amb tu, amb ella.

Common Mistakes

1. Using subject jo after a preposition in the Central baseline.

2. Copying Spanish conmigo as a fused form.

3. Omitting the weak pronoun in an emphatic doubled structure.

4. Using si for first or second person.

5. Attaching a strong phrase to an infinitive.

Key Takeaways

Use mi after a preposition where the subject form would be jo; the other ordinary person forms remain tu, ell, ella, nosaltres, vosaltres, ells, and elles. Keep the preposition, write the phrase separately, and use si mateix/a/os/es for an unambiguous third-person reflexive. Learn the real exception entre tu i jo, and recognize regional (informal) amb jo without importing it into a Central-standard model.