German grammar |
---|
Nouns |
German pronouns describe a set of German words with specific functions, such as being the subject of a clause, or relating the main clause to a subordinate one. Germanic pronouns are divided in to six groups;
The German personal pronouns must always have the same gender, same number, and same case as their antecedents. These rules apply for other pronouns, also.
In German, a pronoun may have a certain position in the sentence under special circumstances. First and second person pronouns usually do not, and they can be used anywhere in the sentence—except in certain poetical or informal contexts.
There are also genitive direct objects. Since the personal pronoun does not have a genitive form, the third person genitive plural of the possessive pronoun is applied in those cases. These forms are bracketed. The genitive object, other than accusative or dative objects, is somewhat outdating:
In Modern German, "erinnern" rather takes the prepositional phrase with the preposition an. However, some verbs cannot be constructed otherwise, and thus genitive objects remain common language in some degree. This is true for "entsinnen" (which is archaic in itself), but also for sentences such as:
The two noun and pronoun emphasizers "selber" and "selbst" have slightly different meanings than if used with nominal phrases. They normally emphasize the pronoun, but if they are applied to a reflexive pronoun (in the objective case), they emphasize its reflexive meaning.
Contents |
Singular | Plural | Formal | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Case | First Person | Second Person | Third Person | First Person | Second Person | Third Person | (Singular and Plural) | ||
(English) | I | you | he | she | it | we | you | they | you |
Nominative | ich | du | er | sie | es | wir | ihr | sie | Sie |
Accusative | mich | dich | ihn | sie | es | uns | euch | sie | Sie |
Dative | mir | dir | ihm | ihr | ihm | uns | euch | ihnen | Ihnen |
Genitive | meiner | deiner | seiner | ihrer | seiner | unser | euer | ihrer | Ihrer |
The verbs following the formal form of "you"—"Sie"—are conjugated identically as in the first- or third-person plurals (i.e. with the infinitive of the verb). For example, "Sie sprechen Deutsch." This means either "You speak German" or "They speak German", and it is completely up to the context to determine which one it is.
The third-person plural pronoun is used for formal speaking. It can be used to address a single person as well as multiple persons. It the former case, it is capitalized in written German, but pronounced the same when spoken; only the context determines which meaning is intended.
Genitive personal pronouns (which are themselves rather the borrowed genitive forms from the possessive pronouns) never indicate possession, which is not only outdated but wrong. That is, my book translates to "mein Buch", or "das Buch von mir" (the latter would be quite identical to the book of me); and never "das Buch meiner". These pronouns may be used for the genitive object ("gedenke meiner": commemorate me), or the rare instances of genitivus objectivus. Archaically, the unflected possessive pronoun can be used instead, e. g. Vergißmeinnicht (instead of: "vergiß meiner nicht" or – vergessen takes the accusative as well—"vergiß mich nicht" in more modern form). Another place where they are used is after prepositions requiring the genitive case, e. g. "seitens meiner" (on my part). However, many of these prepositions can anyway, at least in more colloquial usage, be constructed with the dative, which however is no personal pronoun issue (e.g. "statt mir" instead of "statt meiner"). Ironically, the Bavarian dialect never uses wegen (because of), which in Standard German must take the genitive, otherwise than with a dative, with the very one exception of personal pronouns, where "wegen meiner" (as indicating "von mir aus", if you bother what I will think about it, it's all right) is not altogether unknown.
Possessive pronouns are formed by adding endings to the genitive case of the personal pronoun. The endings are identical to those of the indefinite article ein.
NB: same goes for dein- sein- ...etc
To replace a nominal by a pronoun that is derived from an article, you use the declined form corresponding to the gender, case, and number of the nominal phrase.
Although the pronoun form and the article form are the same in most cases, there are sometimes differences.
Example: mein (my) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plurals | |
Nominative | mein | meine | mein | meine |
accusative | meinen | meine | mein | meine |
dative | meinem | meiner | meinem | meinen |
genitive | meines | meiner | meines | meiner |
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural | |
Nominative | der | die | das | die |
Accusative | den | die | das | die |
Dative | dem | der | dem | den |
Genitive | des | der | des | der |
There are also reflexive pronouns for the dative case and the accusative case. In the first and second person, they are the same as the normal pronouns, but they only become visible in the third person singular and plural. The third person reflexive pronoun for both plural and singular is: "sich":
Reflexive pronouns can be used not only for personal pronouns:
A pronoun contains, or rather, has a relative clause, if there is ever a further meaning to express behind the pronoun, that is to say, some more clarification necessary. The relative pronouns are as follows:
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Nominative | der | die | das | die |
Accusative | den | die | das | die |
Dative | dem | der | dem | denen |
Genitive | dessen | deren | dessen | deren |
Instead, welcher/e/es may be used, which is seen to be more formal, and only common in interdependent multi-relative clauses, or as a mnemonic to German pupils to learn to distinguish das from daß (it is the first of these if you can say dieses, jenes or welches instead). The relative pronoun is never omitted in German. On the other hand, in English, the phrase
The young woman I invited for coffee yesterday is my cousin's fiancée.
completely omits the use of a relative pronoun. (The use of the relative pronouns "who" or "that" is optional in sentences like these.) To state such a thing in German, one would say
Die junge Frau, die ich gestern zum Kaffee eingeladen habe, ist die Verlobte meines Cousins.
Note that the conjugated verb is placed at the end of German relative clauses. This had been the preferable use in Latin sentences as well as in Old High German even for main clauses, and remains intact for subclauses, whereas in main clauses the verb takes the second place. (Exceptions: Jokes begin with the verb: "Treffen sich zwei Freunde. Kommt einer nicht." which might be translated in a way such as this: Meeting two friends. Coming one fails to do. – In family event lyrics, the old custom may be revived for the sake of forced rhyme, e. g. "Mein Onkel ist der beste Mann / und ich dies auch begründen kann." My uncle is right best a man / a thing that really prove I can.)
Likewise, an English participle such as
The man coming round the corner is a thief.
had better been translated to a relative clause, e. g.
Der Mann, der gerade um die Ecke kommt, ist ein Dieb.
However, it might be translated literally which would result in what some call a very German sentence, e. g.
Der gerade um die Ecke kommende Mann ist ein Dieb.
(See relative clauses).
Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to something already defined.
diese (this, the former)
jene (that, the latter)
erstere (the former)
letztere (the latter)
derjenige (the one)
derselbe (the same)