Third person singular conjugation for first person plural

Question

This example makes sense, as we can replace Lucie et moi with nous:

Lucie et moi allons au cinéma tous les mercredis.

However, in everyday spoken French, most people use on for the first person plural as the conjugation is easier (eg: On va au cinéma), where the conjugation takes the form of the third person singular. Given this, can we also use the third person singular conjugation here? That is:

Lucie et moi va au cinéma tous les mercredis.

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Peter,
Jim and Chris are right!
When you have a name and a stress pronoun as a subject in a sentence (‘Lucie et moi’ etc) you should always conjugate the verb in the first person of the plural form, as here:
- Lucie et moi allons au cinéma
- Lucie et moi, nous allons au cinéma
However, you could say / write the following and conjugate the verb in the third person of the singular form:
- Lucie et moi, on va au cinéma (familiar)
→ you have to add ‘on’ as the subject in this case !
 
Here is a link to one of Cécile’s answers on ‘nous vs on’: subject-pronouns-nous-versus-on
Here is another link on stress pronouns as subjects: stress-pronouns-compound-subjects-and-objects-unlike-english
 
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Answer

Hi Peter,I don't think so.Lucie et moi is a complex subject requiring "we" / "nous" so needs to have the verb written "allons" to be grammatically valid in my opinion. Cécile will no doubt comment further in due course.I agree that in spoken French "On" is used but this is a more general sense rather than specifying the subject as in your example above. If the context was such as to make it unambiguous then perhaps your example may work in the sense of "one" in English.So this is my take on the point you make  --  let's see what others think.Best wishes Jim

Answer

I agree with Jim. But you could say, Lucie et moi, on va au cinéma. But you do need to stick on in there.