German pronouns

German grammar
Nouns Verbs Articles Adjectives Pronouns Adverbial phrases Conjugation Sentence structure Declension Modal particle

Personal pronouns

Standard English personal pronouns: You | Thou | We | They | Them | It Dialect & Slang: Informal 2nd person plural Ye Y'all | Yinz Constituents of a clause &c.: Subjective Possessive Prepositional Objective Determinacy: Dummy Generic you Singular they Inclusive and exclusive we Pluralis majestatis T-V distinction Gender issues: Androgynous Gender-specific Gender-neutral Invented (ve, xe, ze, sie/hir) Spivak Other languages: Proto-Indo-European Bulgarian Cantonese Catalan personal French, personal German Macedonian Middle English personal Portuguese, personal Slovene Spanish Burmese Chinese Korean Japanese Vietnamese

German pronouns describe a set of German words with specific functions. As with other pronouns, they are frequently employed as the subject or object of a clause, acting as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, but are also used in relative clauses to relate the main clause to a subordinate one.

Classification and usage

Germanic pronouns are divided into six groups;

• Personal pronouns, which apply to an entity, such as the speaker or third parties;
• Possessive pronouns, which describe ownership of objects, institutions, etc.;
• Interrogative pronouns, which are used in questions, such as who?;
• Reflexive pronouns, in which the subject is also one of the objects;
• Relative pronouns, which connect clauses;
• Indefinite pronouns, which denote entities of quantities.

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.

"Das im Schrank" (the thing in the cupboard)

"Das auf dem Tisch" (the thing on the table)

There are also genitive direct objects. Since the personal pronoun does not have a genitive form, the genitive of the possessive pronoun is applied in those cases. These forms are bracketed. The genitive object, other than accusative or dative objects, is somewhat outdated:

OLD: "Ich erinnere mich ihrer" (MODERN: "Ich erinnere mich an sie.") (I remember her.)

OLD: "Ich erinnere mich seiner" (MODERN: "Ich erinnere mich an ihn.")

OLD: "Ich entsinne mich ihrer" (MODERN: "Ich erinnere mich an sie.")

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 to some degree. This is true for "entsinnen" (which is archaic in itself), but also for sentences such as:

OLD AND MODERN: "Laßt uns der Opfer des Marxismus, Faschismus, und Nationalsozialismus gedenken." (Let us commemorate the victims of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism.)

OLD AND MODERN: "Ich klage Herrn Max Mustermann des Mordes an." (I accuse Mr. Thomas Atkins of murder.)

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.

Personal pronouns

	Singular					Plural			Formal (singular and plural)
Case	First Person	Second Person	Third Person			First Person	Second Person	Third Person	Second Person
(English nominative)	I	you	he	she	null / it	we	you	they	you
Nominative (subject)	ich	du	er	sie	es	wir	ihr	sie	Sie
Accusative (direct object)	mich	dich	ihn	sie	es	uns	euch	sie	Sie
Dative (indirect object)	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. 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.

"Wann ist dein Geburtstag?"—"Er ist morgen" (When is your birthday?—It is tomorrow. Overliterally: He is tomorrow.)

"Ich rufe den Hund"—"Ich rufe ihn" (I am calling the dog—I am calling it. Overliterally: I am calling him.)

This is an example of gender-based pronoun usage that may not be intuitive to an English speaker, because in English the pronoun "it" is always used for an object. In German, objects always have a relevant gender to consider. In the above examples, both birthday and dog are masculine, so "it" becomes "er" in the nominative case and "ihn" in accusative.

Genitive personal pronouns (not to be confused with other instances of the genitive case such as "des"—see below) are sometimes explained as indicating possession; however, this is incorrect and redundant, as the definition of a possessive pronoun (mein) is already to indicate possession. For example, my book translates to "mein Buch", or "das Buch von mir" (the latter an alternate formulation translated literally as the book from/of me), and never "das Buch meiner".

The genitive personal pronouns in the table above find very seldom use in modern German and are nearly always made obsolete by modern formulations. There is a well-known German saying "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" (The dative case is the death of the genitive case), referring to the frequent colloquial replacement of traditionally genitive formulations with dative formulations (e.g. "statt mir" instead of "statt meiner"). Genitive personal pronouns may be used for the genitive object ("gedenke meiner": commemorate me). Archaically, the unflected possessive pronoun can be used, e.g. Vergißmeinnicht (instead of: "vergiß meiner nicht" or—vergessen takes the accusative as well—"vergiss mich nicht" in more modern form). Another use is after prepositions requiring the genitive case, e.g. "seitens meiner" ("on my part", more typically "meinerseits").

Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns are formed by adding endings to the genitive case of the personal pronoun, eventually stripping it of its genitive ending. The endings are identical to those of the indefinite article ein.

Uninflected forms
	sg. msc./ntr.	sg. fem.	pl.	courtesy
1st person	mein	mein	unser
2nd person	dein	dein	euer	Ihr
3rd person	sein	ihr	ihr

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

Pronouns derived from articles

To replace a nominal by a pronoun that is derived from an article, the declined form corresponding to the gender, case, and number of the nominal phrase is used.

Although the pronoun form and the article form are the same in most cases, there are sometimes differences.

The German definite article:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Accusative	den	die	das	die
Dative	dem	der	dem	den
Genitive	des	der	des	der

Reflexive pronouns

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":

"Er liebt sich". (He loves himself.)

"Sie verstecken sich". (They hide themselves.)

Reflexive pronouns can be used not only for personal pronouns:

"Sie hat sich ein Bild gekauft." (She bought herself a picture.)

"Seiner ist schon kaputt." (His is already broken.)

Relative clause

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 was 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.

is best 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

Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to something already defined.

jener, e, es (that, the former)
dieser, e, es (this, the latter) (or "dies" as abbreviation for dieses)
ersterer, e, es (the former) letzterer, e, es (the latter)

all declined like adjectives (if "ersterer" or "letzterer" take the definite article, they are consequently weakly declined, "der erstere" etc.)

derjenige, diejenige, dasjenige (the one)

Declined like [def. art] + [jenig-] + weak adj. ending

Used to identify a noun to be further identified in a relative clause.

derselbe, dieselbe, dasselbe (the same)

Declined like [def. art] + [selb-] + weak adj. ending

Used to indicate an identity stronger than der gleiche ("the equal") would, however, the derselbe / der gleiche distinction is rather nuanced, not usually insisted upon and, if so, rather complicated for native speakers.

Interrogative pronouns

In German, there are the interrogative pronouns, or “question words.” In German they’re sometimes called “W-Wörter,” since they all start with W. Most of them have a direct English equivalent:

''Warum?'' Why?

''Was?'' What?

''Wer?'' Who?

''Wann?'' When?

''Wie?'' How?

The interrogative pronoun "where" is dependent on what is being described

''Wo?'' Where at?

''Woher?'' Where from?

''Wohin?'' Where to?

''Wo'' can be added to the front of many prepositions to make an interrogative term. An "r" is inserted between ''Wo'' when a preposition begins with a vowel e.g.

Wofür lebe ich? What am I living for?

Worüber sprichst du? What are you talking about?

''Welch'' (which) is declined by gender and case.^[1]

References

External links

For a list of words relating to German pronouns, see the German pronouns category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.