Subject Pronouns

Greek subject pronouns are the easiest paradigm in the language and the least used. They are easy because there are only ten forms and every single one is stressed on its last syllable. They are barely used because the verb ending already announces the person, so most of the time the pronoun is simply left out. This page gives you the forms; when to use and drop them gives you the far more interesting question of when to put one in.

The ten forms

The third person is a demonstrative wearing a hat

Greek has no dedicated word for "he", "she" or "it". What it uses instead is αυτός, the near demonstrative — the same word that means "this" in αυτό το βιβλίο. Ancient Greek did the same thing, and Modern Greek never replaced it.

Two practical consequences follow, and both of them bite English speakers.

First, "they" is gendered. English collapses all plural people and things into one they; Greek keeps the three genders apart in the plural exactly as in the singular. A group of women is αυτές, a group of men (or a mixed group) is αυτοί, and a set of things whose noun is neuter is αυτά.

Second, "it" is not neuter by default. English picks it for anything that is not a person. Greek picks the gender of the noun, so a table (το τραπέζι) is αυτό but a computer (ο υπολογιστής) is αυτός and a suitcase (η βαλίτσα) is αυτή. There is no such thing as a genderless third-person pronoun in Greek.

The other demonstrative, εκείνος, also works as a third-person pronoun and points further away — in space, in time or in attention. Which of the two to reach for is a real decision, and it has its own page: αυτός vs εκείνος. For the full declension of both as determiners, see demonstratives.

Pronoun and verb side by side

Here is the pronoun set attached to είμαι ("to be"), the verb you will hear it with most often.

The pronouns are in brackets because that is genuinely how they behave: normally absent. The personal endings already carry the information, so Είμαι κουρασμένος is a complete and perfectly natural sentence.

Look at the third person, though. Είναι is both "he is" and "they are" — the ending has stopped distinguishing them, and it never distinguished he from she in the first place. The third person is therefore the one place where the pronoun regularly does real work rather than adding emphasis.

Without αυτή that sentence would leave you guessing which of the two went home.

εσείς: the plural that is also the polite singular

εσείς does two jobs. It is the ordinary plural "you", addressed to more than one person — and it is the polite singular, addressed to exactly one person you are not on familiar terms with: a stranger, a shopkeeper you do not know, an official, a much older person, a new colleague. Greek uses it far less than French uses vous, but it is alive and it matters. The social side of the choice is on formal and informal you.

The grammatical detail worth learning here is the split agreement. When εσείς refers to one person, the verb goes plural but any predicate adjective stays singular — and takes that person's real gender.

The verb is είστε in all three. The adjective is σίγουρος for one man, έτοιμη for one woman, έτοιμοι for an actual group. The grammar counts the pronoun; the adjective counts the people.

Νά τος! — the one weak subject form

Greek has no weak subject pronouns, with one fossilised exception worth recognising because you will hear it constantly. After the pointing word νά ("there!", "look!") — a different word from the subjunctive particle να, and unlike it stressed, which is why it is written with an accent — and after πού, a tiny unstressed set turns up: τος, τη, το in the singular and τες, τα in the plural (the masculine plural τοι is barely used any more).

These forms exist only in this construction (informal, spoken). You cannot use τος as a subject anywhere else: τος ήρθε is not Greek.

Common Mistakes

1. Using masculine αυτοί for an all-female group. English they has no gender, so learners default to the masculine plural. Greek makes you look at who is in the group.

2. Pairing εσείς with a singular verb. Once learners hear that εσείς can mean one person, they try to give it a singular verb. The verb always goes plural — it is the adjective that stays singular.

3. Using the neuter αυτό for a masculine or feminine noun. English it is a trap here: the gender comes from the Greek noun, not from whether the thing is alive.

4. Using the object form εμένα as a subject. εμένα is the strong object pronoun; the subject form is εγώ, and no amount of emphasis changes that.

Key Takeaways

• The set is εγώ, εσύ, αυτός/αυτή/αυτό, εμείς, εσείς, αυτοί/αυτές/αυτά — ten forms, every one of them stressed on the final syllable.
• The third person is not a pronoun of its own but the demonstrative αυτός, which is why "they" comes in three genders and why "it" is never automatically neuter.
• Subject pronouns are normally omitted; the verb ending already says who. Putting one in is a deliberate act, handled on the next page.
• The third person is where a pronoun most often does real work, because είναι covers "he is", "she is", "it is" and "they are" all at once.
• εσείς is both the plural "you" and the polite singular. Addressing one person, the verb is plural but the predicate adjective is singular: Είστε σίγουρος;
• Νά τος! / Νά τη! preserve the only weak subject forms in the language, and only in that pointing construction (informal).