The pronoun y
One letter, and it replaces a whole place.
Tu vas au marché ? — Oui, j'y vais. Elle habite à Lyon ? — Oui, elle y habite depuis dix ans.
y replaces à / en / dans / sur / chez + a place or a thing — never a person.
| Je vais à la banque. | J'y vais. |
|---|---|
| Il est dans le bureau. | Il y est. |
| Nous pensons à ce problème. | Nous y pensons. |
Position: directly before the verb, like every other object pronoun.
- J'y vais. · Je n'y vais pas. · J'y suis allé.
- With an infinitive it goes before that verb: Je vais y aller.
- In a positive command it follows and is joined: Vas-y ! — and va takes an s it does not normally have, purely so the phrase is pronounceable.
Not for people. Je pense à mon frère → je pense à lui* (stressed pronoun, week 15), never j'y pense. The split is: things and places take y, people take à + tonique*.
You already know it. Il y a is this pronoun — literally "it has there" — which is why the y never moves and why the phrase looks so strange word-by-word. Recognising that is worth more than memorising it as an exception.
What this unlocks
Knowing the rule is not the same as producing it.
This page explains the pattern. The track drills it: the point arrives inside a mini-dialogue, then production marked against a CEFR descriptor, then a module test that returns you to your two weakest sessions if you miss it.