When you replace both objects of a verb with pronouns — I give the book to my brother → I give it to him — French stacks two (sometimes three) pronouns in front of the verb, in a fixed order. Je le lui donne. You cannot rearrange them: *je lui le donne is wrong. The order is dictated by the grammatical slot each pronoun belongs to, not by which one is "the direct object" or "the indirect object." Once you internalize the slot order, you don't have to think about it sentence by sentence — the pronouns sort themselves automatically.
This page lays out the order, explains the logic behind it, and drills the four most common combinations English speakers actually need to produce. The companion page on affirmative imperatives covers the inverted order that applies to commands.
The slot order
The pronoun system has five slots, in this order:
| Slot | Pronouns | Function |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | me, te, se, nous, vous | 1st/2nd person pronouns + reflexive |
| 2 | le, la, les | 3rd-person direct objects |
| 3 | lui, leur | 3rd-person indirect objects |
| 4 | y | place / à + thing |
| 5 | en | de + thing / partitive / quantity |
The order is fixed: slot 1 → slot 2 → slot 3 → slot 4 → slot 5 → verb. A pronoun from a lower slot must go to the left of any pronoun from a higher slot.
You will essentially never have all five filled — the practical maximum is two or three, and certain combinations don't make sense (e.g., you can't have me and te together because both occupy slot 1 — they would compete for the same spot, and French uses a workaround discussed below). The combinations that actually appear in real French are these:
| Combination | Slots | Example |
|---|---|---|
| me/te/se/nous/vous + le/la/les | 1 + 2 | Tu me le donnes ? |
| me/te/se/nous/vous + en | 1 + 5 | Il m'en parle. |
| me/te/se/nous/vous + y | 1 + 4 | Je vous y retrouve. |
| le/la/les + lui/leur | 2 + 3 | Je le lui dis. |
| lui/leur + en | 3 + 5 | Je lui en donne. |
| y + en (rare) | 4 + 5 | Il y en a trois. |
That's the practical inventory. Memorize these six combinations and you have covered virtually every double-pronoun sentence you will ever need to produce.
How it works in practice
Slot 1 + Slot 2: me le, te la, nous les…
When a 1st/2nd person pronoun (or a reflexive) combines with a 3rd-person direct object, the 1st/2nd person comes first.
Tu me le prêtes ?
Will you lend it to me? (me = indirect object, le = direct object)
Elle nous les a montrés hier.
She showed them to us yesterday.
Je te la présente la semaine prochaine.
I'll introduce her to you next week.
Mon père nous les a offerts pour Noël.
My father gave them to us for Christmas.
Notice that me, te, nous, vous here are functioning as indirect objects (= to me, to you, to us), not as direct objects. French doesn't have separate forms for direct and indirect me/te/nous/vous — context (and the slot system) sorts them out.
Slot 2 + Slot 3: le lui, la leur, les leur…
When a 3rd-person direct object combines with a 3rd-person indirect object, the direct comes before the indirect. This is the reverse of what English speakers expect ("I give it to him"); in French it's je le lui donne — direct le before indirect lui.
Je le lui ai déjà dit cent fois.
I've already told him that a hundred times.
Tu peux la leur expliquer ?
Can you explain it to them?
Elle les leur a rendus ce matin.
She gave them back to them this morning.
On ne le lui a pas encore annoncé.
We haven't told him yet.
This is the combination that English speakers fight hardest, because the English mental order is "give it to him" (direct, then indirect). In French it remains direct, then indirect in slot terms, but the surface order ends up looking like English with the "to" stripped: le lui, la leur, les leur.
Slot 3 + Slot 5: lui en, leur en
Lui and leur combine readily with en (= "some of it / of them"). The indirect object comes first.
Je lui en ai donné un peu.
I gave him a little of it.
Tu peux leur en parler ?
Can you talk to them about it?
Mon professeur leur en a expliqué les règles.
My teacher explained the rules of it to them.
Elle ne lui en a jamais parlé.
She has never spoken to him about it.
Slot 1 + Slot 5: m'en, t'en, s'en, nous en, vous en
A 1st/2nd person pronoun + en is extremely common, especially with verbs that take de (parler de, se souvenir de, avoir besoin de).
Tu m'en parles ?
Are you talking to me about it?
Je m'en souviens parfaitement.
I remember it perfectly.
Il s'en occupe demain matin.
He's taking care of it tomorrow morning.
Vous nous en avez déjà parlé ?
Have you already told us about it?
The pattern m'en, t'en, s'en (with elision) is everywhere in spoken French — je m'en fiche (I don't care), je m'en vais (I'm leaving), tu t'en souviens? (do you remember?).
Slot 1 + Slot 4: m'y, t'y, s'y, nous y, vous y
Less common than slot 1 + 5, but you'll meet it. Y replaces à + a place or thing.
Je vous y retrouve à six heures.
I'll meet you there at six.
Tu t'y habitueras vite.
You'll get used to it quickly.
On s'y voit ce soir ?
Shall we meet there tonight?
With negation: ne and pas wrap the whole thing
Negation surrounds the verb plus the pronouns. Ne goes before the first pronoun; pas (or jamais, plus, rien…) goes after the conjugated verb.
Je ne le lui donne pas.
I'm not giving it to him.
Tu ne m'en parles jamais.
You never talk to me about it.
On ne les leur a pas rendus.
We didn't give them back to them.
Il ne s'en est pas occupé.
He didn't take care of it.
In compound tenses, pas goes between the auxiliary and the past participle: je ne *le lui ai pas donné.* The pronouns stick to the auxiliary.
With infinitives and modal verbs
When a modal (aller, vouloir, pouvoir, devoir, savoir, falloir, espérer) is followed by an infinitive, the pronouns go before the infinitive, in the same slot order.
Je vais le lui dire ce soir.
I'm going to tell him tonight.
Tu peux me le prêter ?
Can you lend it to me?
Elle ne veut pas nous en parler.
She doesn't want to talk to us about it.
On doit le leur expliquer doucement.
We have to explain it to them gently.
The pronouns stick to the verb whose meaning they complete — and that's the infinitive. *Je le lui vais dire is wrong. (Two-pronoun + modal-verb sentences get their own dedicated page.)
The "two slot 1s" problem
You can't combine two slot-1 pronouns (me + te, te + nous, me + vous, etc.). When the situation calls for two of these — I introduce you to me, she presents me to you — French refuses to stack them and forces a workaround: use a clitic for one role and a tonic pronoun with à for the other.
Je te présente à mes parents.
I'm introducing you to my parents. (te = direct; à mes parents stays as a phrase)
Tu vas me présenter à ton patron ?
Are you going to introduce me to your boss?
Présente-moi à elle.
Introduce me to her. (clash workaround: me + lui would be awkward, so à elle stays tonic)
The same workaround handles 3rd-person indirect pronouns when they would feel ambiguous next to a slot-1 direct object — French often prefers je te présente à lui over *je te lui présente, even though the slots technically don't collide. In practice, most real two-pronoun sentences avoid the conflict naturally; you rarely need to think about it.
Memorization aid
A common pedagogical mnemonic chains the slots in a left-to-right line, like a small grammar of its own:
me-te-se-nous-vous → le-la-les → lui-leur → y → en → VERB
Some French textbooks present this as a vertical "ladder," with each level being a slot you can fill at most once. If your sentence has more than one pronoun, locate each one on the ladder and write them in top-down order. The verb sits at the bottom (or just to the right).
Why slot 2 comes before slot 3
The order direct before indirect (when both are 3rd person) is partly historical: Old French had a richer case system, and the descended order reflects an older Latin pattern. Synchronically, you can think of it this way: le, la, les are phonologically lighter and structurally tighter to the verb than lui, leur, which carry the dative weight. The lighter element comes closer to the slot 1 pronouns; the heavier one ends up adjacent to the verb. But in practice, no one parses this — they memorize le lui, la lui, les leur as fixed pairs and the productivity emerges from that.
Common Mistakes
❌ Je lui le donne.
Incorrect — when both 3rd-person pronouns combine, direct (le) comes before indirect (lui).
✅ Je le lui donne.
I give it to him.
❌ Tu peux le me prêter ?
Incorrect — slot 1 (me) precedes slot 2 (le).
✅ Tu peux me le prêter ?
Can you lend it to me?
❌ Je en lui parle.
Incorrect — slot 3 (lui) precedes slot 5 (en).
✅ Je lui en parle.
I talk to him about it.
❌ Je ne lui le donne pas.
Incorrect — order is direct before indirect when both 3rd-person.
✅ Je ne le lui donne pas.
I don't give it to him.
❌ Il me le va dire.
Incorrect — with a modal + infinitive, the pronouns sit before the infinitive, not before the modal.
✅ Il va me le dire.
He's going to tell it to me.
Key takeaways
- Five slots, fixed order: me/te/se/nous/vous → le/la/les → lui/leur → y → en.
- The most counterintuitive rule for English speakers: when 3rd-person direct and 3rd-person indirect combine, direct comes first (le lui, la leur, les leur).
- Lui en, leur en are everyday combinations — memorize them as units.
- Negation wraps the whole pronoun-verb cluster: je ne le lui donne pas.
- With modals + infinitive, pronouns hug the infinitive, not the modal: je vais le lui dire.
- You can never combine two slot-1 pronouns (*me te, *te nous); use à
- tonic pronoun as the workaround.
Now practice French
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- Les Pronoms en Français: OverviewA1 — A guided tour of the entire French pronoun system — subject, direct object, indirect object, reflexive, disjunctive, the adverbial pronouns y and en, demonstrative, possessive, relative, interrogative, and indefinite. The map you need before you can navigate the individual chapters: how the categories interact, why French is much more clitic-heavy than English, and where each subsystem lives.
- Multiple Pronouns in the Imperative: The Affirmative/Negative AsymmetryB1 — The affirmative imperative reverses the order of pronouns and attaches them after the verb with hyphens (donne-le-moi). The negative imperative keeps the regular pre-verbal order (ne me le donne pas). This split is the major pattern to master.
- Pronoms avec Verbes Modaux + InfinitifB1 — Where clitic pronouns sit when a modal or auxiliary verb is followed by an infinitive — they attach to the infinitive, not to the conjugated verb. Why modern French enforces this strictly, why older French and Spanish do the opposite, and how to handle stacked pronouns and past modals without slipping into the English instinct.
- Les Pronoms Compléments d'Objet Direct (COD)A1 — Direct object pronouns — me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les — replace the noun the verb acts on. They sit in front of the verb, not after, and that single fact reshapes how French sentences are built.
- Les Pronoms Compléments d'Objet Indirect (COI)A1 — Indirect object pronouns — me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur — replace 'à + person'. They sit in front of the verb just like direct object pronouns, but the third-person forms (lui, leur) are completely distinct from le/la/les.
- Reflexive Pronouns: me, te, se, nous, vous, seA2 — Reflexive pronouns (me, te, se, nous, vous, se) accompany pronominal verbs and refer back to the subject. They sit before the verb in normal sentences, attach with hyphens after affirmative imperatives, and force the auxiliary être in compound tenses.