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Greater use
- From the Cambridge English Corpus Fourth, we found that our female and middle-class students make greater use of the formal variant nous than their respective counterparts.
dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nous
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Jun 8, 2018 · Female and middle-class students favor nous, students with greater extracurricular French language exposure favor on, and students who speak a Romance language at home favor nous.
Nous is nonetheless perfectly correct, and remains the preferred word for we in written French as well as in formal situations when speaking. Nous has its own second-person plural conjugations, whereas on is always conjugated in third-person singular.
Aug 8, 2022 · On, the personal pronoun expressing ‘We’: Contrary to what many French learners think, using on does not carry a formal or even pompous connotation, as is sometimes the case with the English ‘one’. In fact, it’s a very convivial word.
May 19, 2006 · When writting a formal essay does one use 'third person singular - on ' or the 'nous' form when writing about people in gereral or situations? For example: Nous habitons dans une sociétié injuste.
Nov 1, 2022 · Learn about Which form of the conjugated verb to pick between nous/vous/ils/elles in cases with multiple subjects (French Subject Pronouns) and get fluent faster with Kwiziq French.
It is true that 'on' and 'nous' both mean 'we' and can be used pretty much interchangeably but there are subtleties to be aware of when using them. Although you can use both, they are used in different registers (levels of formality).
As in English, plural pronouns replace two or more singular pronouns: you and I = we (nous), you and he = you (vous), etc. But when you actually want to use two singular pronouns – saying something like "you and I" as opposed to "we" – French uses stressed pronouns instead.
