Order of he, she, they, we, I, and you

Question

I saw the following sentences in my workbook. Are they correct?

1.We and they eat dinner together.

2.You, she, he and I are good friends.

3.You, they and we go to school every day.

4.You, she and I go to school every day.

To me number 1 and 3 sound really odd, I have never heard anyone talk like that, but my textbook says the correct orders for pronouns are "you-he-I" and "we-you-they."

Could someone please explain to me the correct order of using he, she, they, we, I, and you as subject in a sentence. Can they all be used in one sentence like example 3?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

In direct answer to your question about ordering - there is no strict rule that applies in every context, but it is considered polite to put others before oneself (eg "you and I").

Unfortunately, most of your examples don't make sense for other reasons. For example, nobody would ever say "you, they, and we" because the person you are speaking to directly would be included in both 'you' and 'we', and 'they' could also be part of 'we'.

When you use a pronoun like 'she', it has to be someone you already mentioned, so they would naturally be included in 'we'. Even if you wanted to separate you and the person you are speaking to from everybody else, the others, like her and him, could be collectively referred to as 'them'.

1. We and they eat dinner together
   We eat dinner with them.

2. You, she, he and I are good friends
   We are all good friends

3. You, they and we go to school every day
   We go to school with them every day

4. You, she and I go to school every day
   We all go to school every day.

Answer 2

These are not errors, but would very rarely be used. This is because "We" means "I and other people", so "We and they" means the same as "We". In almost any common context you would not use 1) and say "We eat dinner together".

If there is any doubt about who is being referred to in the pronoun "we", you would not use "You, she, he and I" but use names instead. "Mary, John, you and I are good friends", or "You, Mary, John and I"

There is a suggestion that you should place others first, but this is only advice for politeness, and not a rule of grammar or anything like that.

In particular, I've never heard a rule "we-you-they". This seems to be completely made up.

Why don't you come with John and us?

Is correct English, and there is reason that you need to use "us and John".

Answer 3

The only rule about pronoun order is to put the pronoun "I" last if it's in a list.

We also prefer to put "me" last in a list, but that's a style rule, rather than a grammar rule. When "me" is not last in a list, it sounds informal, rather than incorrect. So while you'll never see anything like "I and you", you'll often see "me and you", "Me and Elvis", "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" etc.

Beyond that, there's no rules about pronoun order at all.

Your book is wrong about that. And further, those example sentences are unnatural. I'd find yourself a better book.