Agreement of pronouns
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Chris
Kwiziq community member
8/01/18

Jean
Kwiziq community member
8/01/18
Chris
Kwiziq community member
8/01/18

Cécile
Kwiziq language super star
8/02/18
Hi Jean,
As Chris rightly points out, according to French grammatical rules, the noun victime is feminine so everything referring to it in this sentence will be feminine too, e.g. La victime était terrifiée par son expérience .
Should the person be named in the following sentence, all would agree in gender too, which could be masculine or feminine.
This is the wonderful world of French grammar where an inanimate object can be a subject and a person an object, and let's not mention the world of insects which seem to lose one gender altogether!
Hope this helps!
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Jean
Kwiziq community member
8 January 2018
4 replies
Agreement of pronouns
Just saw this in an online newsfeed. Accompagnée d'un ami originaire, comme elle, de la région lyonnaise, la victime entreprenait la descente de la Roche de Mio, lorsqu'elle a bifurqué dans le couloir pour repérer un passage sensé raccourcir l'itineraire. Is it correct to have the pronouns all agreeing with la victime, even when the victim was male ?