There are two forms of personal pronouns in Italian: unstressed (or “conjunctive” or “clitic”) and stressed (or “disjunctive” or “free”). Subject pronouns are stressed only; object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed.

Stressed pronouns are used for emphasis or contrast, or to remove ambiguity. Thus subject pronouns, which are always stressed, are usually not used except for these reasons. They are much more common in informal conversation than in writing. Stressed object pronouns are used like nouns, e.g. they follow verbs and are always separate from them.

First- and second-person pronouns

Note these combinations of subject pronouns:

tu ed io; io e te (R1–2)

The following forms are dialectal in origin and are found in R1:

subject pronouns: te (Center)

subject and object pronouns: mi, ti, noialtri, voialtri (Northern)

When mi, ti, ci, vi are direct objects, a following past participle tends not to agree except in more formal usage, e.g.:

Ciao Maria! Non ti ho visto alla festa! (Non ti ho vista, R2–3)

With Lei, when used as a second-person pronoun, participles and adjectives tend to agree with the sex of the person in question (cf. section 14.2), but in formal registers participles (but less so adjectives) may agree with the gender of the pronoun, e.g.: