Riftweg — The Ridgeway is a Boersk travelling song: a piece for people setting out along the roads and high routes that connect one community with another.

The song grew from the Boersk world itself — its landscape, its movement between settlements, and the importance of journeys in carrying people, news, stories and knowledge across the country. But Riftweg is also particularly important as an example of Boersk in use. Rather than presenting the language as isolated vocabulary or grammar, it allows its sounds, rhythms and sentence patterns to unfold through a complete piece of connected text.

This recording also marks an important stage in the development of the language’s spoken form. The Boersk vocal performance is based upon a human recording made specifically to preserve the intended pronunciation and phrasing of the language, allowing the musical arrangement to grow around the spoken sound rather than asking an artificial voice to determine it.

In that sense, Riftweg sits at the meeting point between language and culture: a constructed language being used for the purpose for which languages ultimately exist — to carry human expression.

Why Build a Language? What Creating a Conlang Taught Us About Grammar, Culture and AI

There is something wonderfully unnecessary about inventing a language.

Humanity already has thousands of them. Some are spoken by hundreds of millions of people; others survive within relatively small communities. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien, who I consider as one of my idols in this field, developed languages for the different ‘races’ that inhabited Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings. As he wrote in one of his letters, “The invention of languages is the foundation. The stories were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.”[1]  Taken together, conlangs display an extraordinary variety of sounds, grammatical systems and ways of organizing ideas. Some even come with fictional histories stretching back centuries or millennia.

These deliberately created languages are usually called constructed languages, or conlangs for short. Some are created for fictional worlds. Others are designed as experiments in logic or communication. Some begin as artistic projects. Some are intellectual puzzles. Some are designed with the goal of facilitating international communication. And some, some are simply made because their creators enjoy languages and want to understand them from the inside.

Now, that last reason is particularly interesting, as this was where I landed when trying to understand complex grammatical concepts in a way that would make sense to me. Because I decided, maybe foolishly in hindsight, that perhaps one of the best ways to discover how robust my actual understanding of the technical grammar really was, was to try using my understanding (along with all its faults) to build a grammar system from scratch and apply what I may (or may not!) have learned. And I can assure you, I realized how much of a novice I was, but also how this could unlock a more analytical route to unpicking the complexities of how the experts describe all languages, be they conlangs or living ones…

Taking grammar apart to see how it works

So here was my starting point. It is easy to learn a grammatical rule and believe that we understand it. I would often commend myself after an hour-long slog that I’d finally got to grips with a certain linguistic concept (only to be later disappointed that it was a tip of a much bigger iceberg – I am sure you can relate!)

Let’s take cases, for example. These can be explained reasonably quickly. As you’ll know from your own studies, a language may change the form of a noun, article or pronoun depending on the grammatical job it performs. German, for instance, retains its four-case system. Latin famously uses cases extensively and language enthusiasts will tell you, after mastering the intricacies of German, that you ‘ain’t seen nothing yet.’ But also, let’s not forget, many other languages organize the expression of similar relationships in different ways.

So… learning the rule is one thing. However, what you’ll find is, trying to design a functioning case system is something else entirely.

Suddenly you have to make decisions. Here’s what suddenly crops up:

Where is the case marked? On the noun? On an article? On an adjective? On several of them?

OK. Ahh but what happens now in the plural?

Now I want to express something more complex regarding the relationship of one idea to another. So now, I will use a preposition – but which prepositions govern which cases and why should they do so? Is it arbitrary or is there a pattern?

And then… verbs. The quagmire that is verbs! New questions emerge:

Do some verbs require particular cases or are they associated with prepositions instead? Because this is a structural decision and the answer is less clear than you’d think.

Even with nouns, which, on paper, simply have case markers, questions arise that a working language will have answered. For example, what happens when several words form a single noun phrase? Where do we multiply the rules, or where would they naturally be dropped? If we apply pure mathematics, we move away from efficient communication, so decisions are made – or in the case of working languages, conventions have prevailed, and they have done so for specific reasons.

And, perhaps most importantly, do the rules you have designed continue working when people try to say things you did not anticipate?

All of this is to say, a concept that seemed straightforward when described in a grammar book becomes a system of interacting choices when applied to the real working world of a language.

That makes conlang development an unusually powerful form of active learning. Instead of merely observing how linguistic structures work, you are forced to construct them, test them and discover where your understanding was incomplete.

And so, when I put this to the team at Lexicogs, our own experiment began in almost exactly this way. In creating Lexicogs as a really useful learning tool, one has to confirm, can we really explain concepts properly? When do we explain, when do we let convention do the talking, what does someone need to know and at what point in their language journey – and from that, how do we create lessons that fulfil this need. And this varies from one language to another. So we decided, the only way to really see this clearly was to put ourselves to the test, and so the experiment of developing a conlang was born.

So, to be clear, the original intention was not to create an elaborate fictional civilisation (more on this later). It was much more modest: to explore grammatical systems, starting with case and verb systems, by trying to build one.

The next question was: where to start? We decided to look specifically at Germanic languages and use that as the inspiration, not least because English itself is a Germanic language, albeit with lots of new layers on top, but this seemed like a good starting point.

The vocabulary therefore was largely developed from Proto-Germanic and then the wider Germanic language family. In practice, the grammar gradually became more sophisticated as we explored examples. Words accumulated. Usage examples were created.

And then something unexpected happened.

When vocabulary starts suggesting a culture

Not part of the original plan, but what became increasingly clear, was that languages are not simply lists of interchangeable labels – we all know this as language enthusiasts, but what we began to see was the mechanics of what drives this.

As you’ll have no doubt experienced, an English word and its apparent equivalent in another language rarely occupy precisely the same semantic territory. Languages divide experience differently. And the same is exactly, and perhaps surprisingly true, of a conlang.

Experience shows us, one language may distinguish concepts that another expresses with a single word. Another may use the same word across ideas that English treats separately. Metaphors become conventional. Historical meanings linger inside apparently ordinary expressions.

But… When building a language carefully, exactly the same thing begins to happen.

At first, you consciously choose meanings.

Eventually, relationships between those meanings begin suggesting things you did not consciously plan.

A vocabulary concerning landscape may suggest how the speakers relate to their environment. Words surrounding obligation, protection, hospitality or judgement may begin implying assumptions about society. Distinctions within apparently simple verbs can reveal what kinds of actions the language treats as meaningfully different. These all become not just word choices, but carefully considered choices.

At that point something curious happens.

You are no longer simply asking:

“What word should this language have?”

You begin asking:

“What kind of people would need these distinctions?”

And that question opens an entirely different door.

Geography begins to appear. Social structures develop. Stories become possible. Moral assumptions emerge. Customs require explanation that you didn’t expect.

Suddenly, the language is no longer sitting inside an experimental framework, but a conlang is developing a fictional world of its own.

In other words, the fictional world is beginning to grow out of the language.

Language as a way of exploring worldview

This does not mean that grammar magically determines culture. That would be a much stronger claim, and one we would not make – and there are academics who indeed will be devoting their life’s work to exploring this idea, so it is not our place to say.

What we can, however, say is that what language appears to do is create conceptual possibilities. This conclusion was much stronger than we ever thought it would be.

To explain, we found:

Once a language distinguishes two ideas, those ideas become easier to discuss separately.

Once a metaphor becomes productive, it can be extended.

Once a society has vocabulary for a particular kind of obligation, judgement or relationship, writers using that language naturally begin exploring what that concept implies.

This is one reason conlangs can become unexpectedly absorbing.

They are simultaneously creative and analytical.

You design a system – and then start discovering unintended consequences inside the system you designed.

That can lead somewhere considerably deeper than naming imaginary mountains. Rather, it can become a form of a much larger cultural thought experiment.

What would authority mean in a society that linguistically associates power with protection?

What would justice look like if restitution were conceptually distinct from punishment based on a word choice we have decided upon?

What happens if myths are classified not according to whether they are literally factual, but according to the kind of truth a community believes they preserve?

What sort of stories would such a culture tell?

At that point, vocabulary, literature and philosophy begin reinforcing one another.

And the conlang becomes less like a code and more like an ecosystem.

Then AI entered the experiment

There is another reason this particular project developed in an unusual direction.

We were also exploring what artificial intelligence could –  and could not – contribute. This is also important when we assess the role of AI in developing language courses for working languages.

Now, at first the possibilities appeared obvious:

Large language models are extraordinarily good at recognising linguistic patterns. They can analyse grammar, propose examples, identify relationships and produce large amounts of text extremely quickly.

Surely, then, a constructed language would be an ideal environment for AI.

The reality was considerably messier. Here’s why:

AI could produce extremely convincing mistakes.

Give a model a language with Germanic ancestry and it could happily invent a word that looked magnificently Germanic, obeyed the apparent sound system and fitted the sentence beautifully.

There was only one problem.

The word did not exist.

The same problem appeared with grammar. Once the model recognised a productive pattern, it might apply that pattern somewhere the language had never authorised it.

The result was especially dangerous because incorrect output often looked completely plausible.

This led to one of the most useful lessons of the entire experiment:

Plausibility is not the same thing as correctness.

And that matters far beyond constructed languages.

Teaching an AI what it is allowed to know

The solution emerged slowly through repeated failure.

A reliable system needed at least three different forms of authority (it may need more, but we haven’t discovered them yet!) But let’s focus on what we did find that we needed, which emerged through these repeated failures:

First came a controlled lexicon: the words that actually existed, together with their meanings, grammatical properties and accepted forms.

Then came an explicit grammar: the rules governing how those words could legitimately interact.

Finally came an attested corpus: examples of the language being used in conversation, narrative, songs and other contexts.

In the event, we can conclude that, despite our best wishes, none of these proved sufficient alone.

A dictionary could tell the model which words existed but not everything about how speakers actually used them.

A grammar could provide productive rules while still encouraging the model to generate forms that appeared structurally possible but had never been admitted into the language.

Examples showed real usage, but without the grammar it was difficult to distinguish an underlying rule from an accidental feature of one sentence.

Together, however, they produced something much more powerful.

Lexicon. Grammar. Corpus.

Each constrains the others.

And an important principle related to AI gradually emerged: when the model is uncertain, it must not fill the gap.

It must stop.

That sounds simple, but it reverses one of the normal expectations placed upon generative AI. We usually ask models to continue producing useful answers.

In a controlled linguistic system, sometimes the most valuable answer is:

“That concept does not yet exist in the canon.”

The goal therefore became not teaching the AI to invent more successfully, but teaching it when not to invent at all.

What failure taught us

This process took a surprisingly large number of iterations, and it comes after nine months of repeatedly getting it wrong.

Words drifted, grammar was inconsistently applied, earlier examples contradicted later rules and then needed to be revised, over and over until the system – both in terms of the AI model and the rules of the conlang itself – were stable.

Then, when we came to producing artefacts in the language, new problems with today’s AI tools emerged that we hadn’t built into the design. For example, even using phonetic spelling based on IPA, speech synthesis pronounced perfectly valid words either incorrectly or in artificially unnatural human speech patterns.

And then, music-generation systems interpreted spelling according to entirely different linguistic assumptions, despite being given what superficially seemed like entirely robust instructions.

Changes made in one part of the language unexpectedly affected another and everything was more tightly, but inextricably interwoven in ways we did not expect.

But, these were healthy failures. Indeed, those failures became part of the experiment and contributed even more to our understanding of how languages really operate.

Every problem required another distinction between what was assumed and what was actually defined. Over time, the project developed increasingly clear ideas about source authority, linguistic validation and the division of responsibility between human creator and AI collaborator.

The AI became most useful not when it was permitted unlimited creativity, but when creativity occurred inside carefully maintained boundaries.

That is perhaps the most transferable lesson we have learned so far.

The interesting part is the loop

There is also a temptation when discussing AI-assisted creative work to ask who created something.

Did the human create it or did the AI create it?

Our experience suggests that this can sometimes be the wrong question.

The interesting thing is the loop. A human establishes a linguistic rule or chooses a word – in our case, we decided what the master Germanic root word should be by looking at English, Old English, Icelandic, Norse fragments, German, Dutch and Proto-Germanic, or even Indo-European constructions when necessary. We took a view on what we liked, what made sense semantically, what made sense culturally and what fitted best a human preference.

Following this, the AI leans into its strongest abilities wonderfully. It identifies the possible implications, the patterns, the wider relationships and links, and, most importantly, the contradictions — because holding that whole mental map of attested and non-attested relationships simultaneously becomes increasingly difficult as the system grows.

So, the AI lands its analysis. The human judges whether those implications are linguistically and culturally convincing and makes a decision whether this forms part of an official attested usage by testing the idea through actual use.

And, in fact, the contradictions are the most useful part. Based on these, the language is revised and made into a more coherent system. The revised attested system then makes new ideas possible. Importantly, neither participant simply dictates the finished result. The productive unit is the iteration and the lessons this provides and the enlightenment that follows.

So, to turn back to our original experiment: it has turned a relatively small grammatical exploration exercise into something we did not originally expect and could not at all have anticipated: a new conlang, a language that now has thousands of controlled lexical entries, and with that, its own developing literary forms, social concepts, mythology, music, narratives and a fictional cultural world. Being language nerds, this has become an almost ‘as important’ side project to our original goal of providing really immersive language lessons.

For us, it has also raised an intriguing question, that we did not expect to be debating in the field of conlanging. And that is: When does a constructed language stop being merely an invented communication system and start becoming a way of thinking through an imagined culture?

We do not yet know the answer.

But exploring that question has become part of this unintentional ‘side-project.’ We’re now looking at this in the broader context of AI, its uses in language learning, and the new artistic creations it can spawn, as we’d love to be part of the future discussion on this subject matter and contribute where we can.

So why build a language?

OK, so through our own experiences, we feel that we may be better placed to answer this than we were at the beginning, although we do not claim to be in any way the experts in this emerging field of linguistics, far from it!

And the annoying answer, but the correct one seems to remain: there are as many answers to this question as there are people making them.

Some want to populate fictional worlds – and in the creative arts space this will continue to be hugely valuable, and we can’t wait to see the influence and potential of AI here.

 Some love phonology – and AI creates an amazing opportunity to explore how ‘dictated rules’ morph when confronted with human conversational reality.

Some enjoy grammatical systems. There’s an interesting question that emerges here. Can a language be mathematically perfect? Should it be? It enlightens us as to why ‘exceptions’ exist in real languages when grammar rules hit the reality of efficient human communication.

Some want to experiment with communication. There’s a strong case, culturally, for developing a language that is ‘politically neutral,’ but is it possible within our global culture?

Some simply find pleasure in discovering what happens when sounds, grammar and meaning are assembled differently. We think that this, combined with the possibilities of AI, could open fascinating new avenues for linguistic experimentation: helping us explore how linguistic systems emerge, why particular kinds of change occur, and what those experiments might suggest about the continuing evolution of living languages.

And sometimes, just sometimes, a project begins for one reason and quietly becomes something else.

That is what happened to ours.

What started as an attempt to understand language structure gradually became an experiment in linguistic design, cultural emergence and AI-assisted creativity.

We call the language Boersk.

And somewhere behind it now sits an entire fantastical world that was never part of the original plan.

If you are curious, you can explore the Boersk project here.

In conclusion

Even if invented languages themselves hold no particular appeal, and there’s no reason they should, the experiment has already reinforced something central to the philosophy behind Lexicogs and what we already believed:

Languages are not simply collections of words to memorise.

They are systems through which people organise experience, preserve culture, express relationships and make meaning. And for those with a curious appetite, we’d say this… Sometimes the best way to appreciate how extraordinary those systems are is to try building one and just seeing where that journey takes you!

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds.), No. 165, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Making Comparisons in French

Once you can describe something in French, a natural next step is to compare it with something else.

You might already be able to say:

Le film est intéressant.
The film is interesting.

But what if you want to say that the film is more interesting than the book? Or that an exhibition was less impressive than a concert? Or that one performance was as moving as another?

French uses three very useful comparison patterns to do this:

The good news is that these structures build directly on adjectives you may already know.

1. From describing to comparing

Let’s take a familiar sentence:

Le film est intéressant.
The film is interesting.

To make a comparison, we can place plus before the adjective and que before the thing we are comparing it with:

Le film est plus intéressant que le livre.
The film is more interesting than the book.

The basic pattern is therefore:

thing + être + plus / moins / aussi + adjective + que + comparison

This is best illustrated.

Notice that French does not normally change the adjective itself to mean more or less. Instead, words such as plus, moins and aussi are placed around the adjective.

2. Saying ‘more … than’ with plus … que

Use:

plus + adjective + que

to say that one thing has more of a particular quality than another.

Le livre est plus captivant que le film.
The book is more captivating than the film.

Le concert est plus divertissant que le spectacle.
The concert is more entertaining than the show.

Cette histoire est plus originale que l’autre.
This story is more original than the other one.

The adjective itself still describes the first thing in the comparison. We will come back to why that matters for agreement shortly.

3. Saying ‘less … than’ with moins … que

For the opposite comparison, use:

moins + adjective + que

Le film est moins captivant que le livre.
The film is less captivating than the book.

L’exposition est moins impressionnante que le concert.
The exhibition is less impressive than the concert.

La fin est moins prévisible que le début.
The ending is less predictable than the beginning.

The structure is identical to the one with plus: only the comparison word changes.

4. Saying ‘as … as’ with aussi … que

When the two things are equal in the quality you are describing, use:

aussi + adjective + que

La pièce est aussi émouvante que le film.
The play is as moving as the film.

Le livre est aussi intéressant que le documentaire.
The book is as interesting as the documentary.

L’interprétation est aussi originale que la première version.
The performance is as original as the first version.

So the three structures work as a family:

5. Adjective agreement still matters

Adding a comparison does not remove the agreement rules you already know.

Compare:

Le film est plus intéressant que la pièce.

but:

La pièce est plus intéressante que le film.

The adjective changes because it describes la pièce, which is feminine.

The noun after que does not determine the adjective form.

That gives us:

This is an important connection with the adjective rules you already know: the comparison is new, but agreement works in exactly the same way.

6. Bringing comparisons into an opinion

Comparisons become particularly useful when you combine them with the opinion language you already know.

Instead of simply saying:

Le livre est captivant.

you can make your opinion more precise:

À mon avis, le livre est plus captivant que le film.
In my opinion, the book is more captivating than the film.

Or:

Je trouve que l’exposition est moins impressionnante que le concert.
I think the exhibition is less impressive than the concert.

And with a past reaction:

Personnellement, j’ai trouvé la pièce aussi émouvante que le film.
Personally, I found the play as moving as the film.

You can also explain your comparison:

À mon avis, le livre est plus captivant que le film parce que l’histoire est plus détaillée.
In my opinion, the book is more captivating than the film because the story is more detailed.

This is where comparisons become much more than a grammar pattern: they allow you to develop and qualify an opinion rather than simply describe something.

7. Que sometimes becomes qu’

Just as elsewhere in French, que shortens to qu’ before a vowel or mute h.

For example:

Ce film est plus intéressant qu’un documentaire classique.
This film is more interesting than a conventional documentary.

La nouvelle version est moins prévisible qu’avant.
The new version is less predictable than before.

Nothing has changed in the comparison itself. Qu’ is simply the shortened form of que.

8. One important exception: bon → meilleur

Most adjectives follow the pattern we have already seen:

plus intéressant
more interesting

plus original
more original

But French does not normally use plus bon as the ordinary comparative of bon.

Instead:

bon → meilleur

So:

Le film est bon.
The film is good.

becomes:

Le film est meilleur que le livre.
The film is better than the book.

Because meilleur is an adjective, it still agrees with the noun it describes:

This is another point where your knowledge of adjective agreement continues to do useful work.

The comparative meilleur is the adjective counterpart of bon.

9. Meilleur or mieux?

English uses better in several different ways, but French distinguishes between meilleur and mieux.

Compare:

Ce film est meilleur que l’autre.
This film is better than the other one.

Here we are describing a thing as better, so we use the adjective meilleur.

But:

Elle chante mieux que Paul.
She sings better than Paul.

Here we are comparing how an action is performed. Mieux is the comparative of bien and does not agree.

A useful way of thinking about the distinction is:

You will also hear C’est mieux — That’s better — as a very common general judgement.

For this lesson, the important connection is that meilleur is an adjective, while mieux is not, so only meilleur follows the adjective-agreement system.

10. What about ‘worse’?

French gives us two useful ways of comparing the adjective mauvais:

plus mauvais que
worse than

and:

pire que
worse than

For example:

Ce film est plus mauvais que le précédent.

or:

Ce film est pire que le précédent.

Both can express the idea that the film is worse than the previous one. Pire is itself already a comparative form, so we do not say plus pire.

For comparisons such as less bad and as bad as, keep the ordinary adjective:

moins mauvais que
less bad than

aussi mauvais que
as bad as

The pattern to remember

For comparisons with adjectives:

plus + adjective + que
more … than

moins + adjective + que
less … than

aussi + adjective + que
as … as

And remember that the adjective still agrees with the person or thing it describes.

So once you can say:

La pièce est intéressante.

you are only one small step away from:

À mon avis, la pièce est plus intéressante que le film.

This quiz is associated with the lesson:
Using Adjectives in French

French Quiz – Using Adjectives

Lui, leur or y? People and Things After à

French often uses à before both people and things:

Je réponds à Marie.
I reply to Marie.

Je réponds à la question.
I answer the question.

At first sight, the structure looks very similar. But when we replace the noun with a pronoun, French treats them differently:

Je réponds à Marie.
→ Je lui réponds.
I reply to her.

but:

Je réponds à la question.
→ J’y réponds.
I answer it.

So why do we use lui in one sentence and y in the other?

That is what we are going to explore.

1. People and Things Can Behave Differently

You may have seen that certain verbs use lui or leur when the indirect object is a person:

But when an à + non-person phrase is replaced, French very often uses y:

Here, y replaces the whole phrase beginning with à:

à cette question → y

à ce problème → y

And, like lui and leur, y normally goes before the verb.

So compare:

Je lui réponds.
I reply to him / her.

J’y réponds.
I answer it.

The first refers to a person.
The second refers to a thing or idea.

A useful starting point

When you see à + a noun, ask:

Am I referring to a person, or to a thing?

That will often help you decide which pronoun pattern you need. If lui and leur are new to you, then start with our lesson, How to Use Indirect Object Pronouns in French.

2. Y with Things and Ideas

Let’s start with some examples illustrating what happens when the complement is not a person.

In these examples, y replaces the whole à + thing or idea phrase.

Notice that this also works when à has combined with an article:

au problème → y

à la question → y

aux conséquences → y

The complete phrase disappears and y takes its place.

3. Y Does Not Show Gender or Number

There is another useful difference.

With lui and leur, French distinguishes between one person and several people:

à Marie → lui

à Marie et Paul → leur

But y does not change according to the gender or number of the thing being replaced.

Compare:

Je pense à ce problème.
→ J’y pense.

Je pense à cette question.
→ J’y pense.

Je pense à ces problèmes.
→ J’y pense.

Je pense à ces questions.
→ J’y pense.

The same pronoun — y — works in all four sentences.

So you do not need separate masculine, feminine, singular or plural forms.

4. The Three Patterns Side by Side

We can now bring everything together into three distinct patterns.

So there are really two questions to ask:

1. What pattern does the verb use?

and:

2. Am I replacing a person or a thing?

Those two questions will take you much further than a rule based simply on seeing à.

5. Begin Recognizing the Patterns

One of the clearest ways to see the difference is to keep the verb the same and change what follows it.

These comparisons are particularly useful because they show that the noun being replaced matters as well as how different verbs behave.

6. Where Does y Go?

In the examples above, y comes before the conjugated verb:

J’y pense.

Nous y répondons.

Elle s’y intéresse.

Ils y réfléchissent.

This is the same general position we also see with lui and leur:

Je lui parle.

Nous leur répondons.

Compare:

Je réponds à Marie.
→ Je lui réponds.

Je réponds à cette question.
→ J’y réponds.

The pronoun changes, but its position before the verb remains familiar.

There are additional rules when an infinitive, compound tense or command is involved, which we can see in this table:

7. Y Can Also Refer to a Place

You may already have seen y used in another way:

Je vais à Paris.
→ J’y vais.
I’m going there.

Nous sommes au restaurant.
→ Nous y sommes.
We are there.

That is another major use of y.

In this lesson, however, we are concentrating on cases where y replaces an à + thing or idea:

penser à quelque chose → y penser

répondre à quelque chose → y répondre

s’intéresser à quelque chose → s’y intéresser

The place use is closely related, but it is worth learning as its own pattern.

8. Putting It into Practice

A Practical Way to Think About It

You do not need to label every complement grammatically before speaking.

A more useful habit is to learn the pattern with the verb and notice what is being replaced.

For example:

répondre à quelqu’un → lui / leur répondre

répondre à quelque chose → y répondre

penser à quelqu’un → penser à lui / elle / eux / elles

penser à quelque chose → y penser

s’intéresser à quelqu’un → s’intéresser à lui / elle / eux / elles

s’intéresser à quelque chose → s’y intéresser

Over time, these combinations become familiar as complete patterns rather than rules that have to be reconstructed every time.

Lui, leur or à lui, à elle?

1. Why Do We Sometimes Use lui — and Sometimes à lui or à elle?

You may already have learnt that when we are talking about a person after certain verbs, we can replace à + the person with an indirect object pronoun.

For example:

Or, in the masculine version:

So far, so good. But perhaps you have also come across sentences such as, ‘Je pense à elle’:

At first sight, this can seem rather strange. In all four examples, we can see à + a person:

parler à Marie
téléphoner à Paul
penser à Marie
s’intéresser à Paul

But French does not treat all of these patterns in the same way.

With verbs such as parler à and téléphoner à, we can replace the person with lui or leur, and the à disappears:

Je parle à Marie. → Je lui parle.

With other verbs and expressions, such as penser à and s’intéresser à, the à remains:

Je pense à Marie. → Je pense à elle.

So the important idea for this lesson is:

In this lesson, we’ll look at some of the most useful cases where French keeps à and uses forms such as à lui, à elle, à eux and à elles instead.

2. Two Different Patterns with à + a Person

The examples in the first section look very similar:

Je parle à Marie.
Je pense à Marie.

Both contain à + a person, but French treats the two constructions differently.

With some verbs, the whole à + person phrase can be replaced by an indirect object pronoun:

Here, à Marie or à Paul et Marie disappears completely and is replaced by lui or leur.

But with other verbs and expressions, French keeps à:

In these examples, we are not replacing the whole à + person phrase with lui or leur. Instead, we keep à and replace only the person:

à Marie → à elle
à Paul → à lui

The forms moi, toi, lui, elle, nous, vous, eux and elles are often called stressed pronouns. You may also see them described as disjunctive pronouns. We’ll look at the full set in the next section.

There is a deeper grammatical reason for this distinction, connected with the way different French verbs take their complements. But you do not need to analyse that every time you speak French. At this stage, it is much more useful to learn the pattern together with the verb:

parler à quelqu’un → lui / leur parler
téléphoner à quelqu’un → lui / leur téléphoner

but:

penser à quelqu’un → penser à lui / elle / eux / elles
s’intéresser à quelqu’un → s’intéresser à lui / elle / eux / elles

3. The Stressed Pronouns After à

We have now seen that with some verbs and expressions, French keeps à when we replace the person:

Je pense à Marie.
→ Je pense à elle.

Il s’intéresse à Paul.
→ Il s’intéresse à lui.

The pronouns we use in this type of construction are called stressed pronouns. You may also see them called disjunctive pronouns.

Here is the full set:

For example:

There is an important difference here from lui and leur.

When we use the indirect object pronouns:

lui can mean to him or to her
leur can mean to them, regardless of gender.

For example:

Je parle à Paul. → Je lui parle.
I speak to him.

Je parle à Marie. → Je lui parle.
I speak to her.

But with stressed pronouns after à, the distinction between masculine and feminine becomes visible again:

This last comparison is particularly useful because lui appears in both patterns — but it is doing something different.

In:

Je lui parle.

lui stands on its own before the verb.

But in:

Je pense à lui.

the à remains, and lui comes after it.

For now, there is no need to analyse that distinction technically. The useful thing to recognise is the pattern:

lui / leur + verb

versus:

verb + à + stressed pronoun

4. Common Verb Patterns That Keep à

Now that you know what the stressed pronouns look like, the next step is to become familiar with some of the verb patterns that use them.

The most useful approach is not to see à and try to work out a rule each time. Instead, learn the verb and its pattern together.

We have already seen two important examples:

Here are some other useful patterns that behave in the same way.

tenir à quelqu’un

When tenir à quelqu’un means that someone matters to you or that you care about them, the à remains:

Elle tient à ses amis.
→ Elle tient à eux.
Her friends matter to her. / She cares about them.

Je tiens à Marie.
→ Je tiens à elle.
I care about her.

faire attention à quelqu’un

With faire attention à, we also keep à:

Fais attention à Paul.
→ Fais attention à lui.
Pay attention to him.

Nous faisons attention aux enfants.
→ Nous faisons attention à eux.
We pay attention to them.

Notice something useful in that second example. With the noun, we have:

aux enfants

because à + les = aux.

But when we replace les enfants with a stressed pronoun, we return to:

à eux

songer à quelqu’un

Songer à means to think about or think of someone, often with a slightly more reflective sense than penser à.

Elle songe à Paul.
→ Elle songe à lui.
She is thinking about him.

Je songe à mes parents.
→ Je songe à eux.
I am thinking about my parents.

We do not need to learn a huge list of these verbs at once. What matters is beginning to recognise that these belong to a different pattern from verbs such as parler à, téléphoner à and répondre à.

So compare:

parler à Marie → lui parler

but:

penser à Marie → penser à elle

and:

téléphoner à Paul → lui téléphoner

but:

faire attention à Paul → faire attention à lui

For this lesson, the main patterns to recognise are:

7. One Last Detail: Adding Emphasis or Contrast

There is one useful final detail to know.

With verbs such as parler à, the normal pattern is still:

Je parle à Marie. → Je lui parle.
I speak to her.

Remember that lui can mean either to him or to her. Usually, the context makes it perfectly clear who we are talking about.

But sometimes a speaker wants to make the distinction explicit — perhaps to emphasise one person or contrast them with somebody else.

In that situation, French can add a stressed pronoun:

Je lui parle, à elle, pas à lui.
I’m talking to her, not to him.

Here, lui is still the indirect object pronoun belonging to parler à quelqu’un.

The additional à elle tells us exactly who is being emphasised.

You can see the same idea in:

Je lui ai donné le livre, à elle.
I gave the book to her.

The stressed pronoun has not replaced the normal indirect object pronoun pattern. It has been added for emphasis or clarification. This is a recognised use of French stressed pronouns, particularly when the speaker needs to make gender or contrast explicit.

Compare the two uses

In a normal, neutral sentence:

Je lui parle.
I speak to him / her.

With deliberate contrast:

Je lui parle, à elle, pas à lui.
I’m speaking to her, not to him.

This is different from the pattern you learnt with penser à:

Je pense à elle.

Here, à elle is required by the verb pattern. There is no indirect object pronoun alongside it:

Je pense à elle.
Je lui pense.

So these two sentences may both contain à elle, but for different reasons:

Je pense à elle.
→ penser à normally keeps à + stressed pronoun.

Je lui parle, à elle.
→ parler à normally uses lui, with à elle added only for emphasis or clarification.

The big picture

For ordinary sentences, keep relying on the verb pattern you have learnt:

parler à quelqu’un → lui / leur parler

penser à quelqu’un → penser à lui / elle / eux / elles

If you later hear a stressed pronoun added to a sentence such as Je lui parle, à elle, you now know why it is there: the speaker is making the person explicit or creating a contrast.

Give It a Go!

If you’d like to test your knowledge of what you’ve learned so far, you can select from any quizzes or activities below.

French Written Quiz – Indirect Pronoun Patterns

A written quiz to test your knowledge of indirect object pronouns and their patterns in French.

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This quiz appears is associated with the article:
How To Use Indirect Object Pronouns in French

French Quiz – Indirect Pronoun Patterns

This quiz appears is associated with the article:
How To Use Indirect Object Pronouns in French

French Quiz – Indirect Object Pronouns