First person

First person is a grammatical person, used when the speaker or writer refers to him or herself, referring only to him or herself (first person singular) or referring to him or herself and others (first person plural).

The English first person pronouns are I, me, my, mine, and myself (singular) and we, us, our, ours, ourselves (plural).

In English, use of the first person uses the common gender, i.e. grammatically English is the same whether the speaker considers him or herself to be masculine, feminine or non-binary. Contrast, for example, Japanese, where first the person pronoun used indicates the speaker’s gender.

Use of the first person is discouraged in certain registers, particularly Academic English, where the passive voice may be preferred.

Contrast second person, third person.