As their name suggests, these pronouns refer to grammatical persons: first (“I”), second (“you”), and third (“he,” “she,” “it”).

Table 13-1 First Person Pronouns

Table 13-2 Second Person Pronouns

Latin personal pronouns are used the same way as English personal pronouns are. There are, however, a couple of points to know about them.

First, thanks to personal endings on verbs, the nominative case form for the first and second person really isn't necessary. If a verb ends in -m or -s or -mus or -tis, then you automatically know that “I,” “you,” “we,” or “you” is the subject. So why have it? Emphasis, that's all. When you want to emphasize a person in English, you simply raise your voice. “I want to go home!” For Latin, this approach is awkward. Domum redī re volī ! Rather than yell an ending, Latin adds the nominative of the personal pronoun. Ego domum redī re volī!(The pronoun may then be yelled for added emphasis.)

The second point is that the genitive case form of first and second person personal pronouns (meī, tuī, nostrī/nostrum, vestrī/vestrum) are never used to show possession. To show possession (i.e., “my,” “your,” “our,” “your”), you must use the possessive adjectives meus, tuus, noster, and vester, which agree in gender, case, and number with whatever noun they are modifying (e.g., pater meus, “my father”; mā ter tua, “your mother”; and so on). The genitive case forms of personal pronouns are used for any genitive use.

Why are there two different forms for the genitive plural? The first ones (nostrum and vestrum) tend to be used in a partitive sense, while the second ones (nostrī and vestrī) tend to be used objectively.

Partitive: Nē mo nostrum rūs cessit. (None of us went to the country.)

Objective: Odium vestrī nīs retinuit. (Hatred of you people kept us back.)