German Personal Pronouns:
At this stage in learning German, you likely have a nice bit of German nouns under your belt!
But it stinls to always sound like you're reading out of a 1st grade book: The girl is tall. The girl is kind. I like the girl. Do you like the girl?
These personal pronouns take the place of specific nouns (the names of people, places or things). Basically, they are used instead of a specific name to aviod repetition and to help ease the flow of sentence, just like we do in English.
We usually inject personal pronouns into a sentence when the name of the noun has been previously mentioned, so that the reader will know what is being referred to. Consider this example:
- Anna bought a new car last week. She absolutely loves it.
In the second sentence, there are two personal pronouns. The personal pronoun she takes place of Anna while the personal pronoun it take the place of car.
In German, we choose the right personal pronoun depending on various factors:
- Number: singular (I) or plural (we)
- Person: 1st person (I), 2nd person (you), or 3rd person (he/she)
- Gender: male (he), female (she) or neuter (it)
- Case: subject (we) or object (us)
Cases
There are four cases in German: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.
English relies heavily on word order to distinguish case. In German, however, the word order is more flexible because the case is more clearly visible within pronoun forms and ending.
Cases represent the parts of speech within a sentence. They are an important part of German grammar as they are responsible for which pronouns, adjective endings and articke forms are used. Will people understand you if you use the wrong case? Possibly, but it could also lead to some pretty big misunderstandings. So it is best to try to get it straight.
In a nutshell:
- Nominative case: the sentence subject: who or what is doing the action.
- Accusative case: the direct object: who or what is receiving the action of the verb.
- Dative case: the indirect object: answers the question, "To or for whom?"
- Genitive case: showing of possession: answers the question "Whose?"
Please note that there are also possessive pronouns that are identical to the genitive personal pronouns, but they are used differently in a sentence. The genitive is now primarily a written form and rarely used in spoken German anymore.
German Personal Pronouns in Their Respective Cases
| Nominative Pronouns | Accusative Pronouns | Dative Pronouns | Genitive Pronouns |
| İch | mich | mir | meiner |
| du | dich | dir | deiner |
| er | ihn | ihm | seiner |
| sie | sie | ihr | ihrer |
| es | es | ihm | seiner |
| wir | uns | uns | unser |
| ihr | euch | euch | euer |
| sie | sie | ihnen | ihner |
| Sie | Sie | ihnen | ihner |
Examples for exercising about what we learn:
- Ich habe eine Katze. Sie ist sehr niedlich.
- Herr Schneider hatte einen Wellensittich. Er ist gestorben
(Wer - der Wellensittich oder Herr Schneider?)
- Es regnet. Es ist schon spät.
- Es freut mich, dass du mich besuchst.
(anstelle von: Dass du mich besuchst, freut mich)
- Ich habe Hunger. Mir ist kalt.
- Wir gehen ins Kino. Uns ist das egal.
- Wie heißt du? Wie geht es dir?
- Woher kommt ihr? Welche Musik gefällt euch?
- Können Sie das bitte wiederholen? Kann ich Ihnen helfen?
- Wir erinnerten uns ihrer.
- Sie waren seiner überdrüssig.
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