![]() ![]() sie she sie her ihr her 3rd person neut./sing. er he ihn him ihm him 3rd person fem./sing. du you dich you dir you 3rd person masc./sing. Eng 1st person ich I mich me mir me 2nd person sing. You can use genitive possessive pronouns when you need to replace a noun that’s “owned” with a pronoun. Genitive: In modern German, the genitive forms of personal pronouns are very rarely used, even in formal language, so you don’t need to spend time learning them. Genitive: In modern German, the genitive forms of personal pronouns are very rarely used, even in formal language. To help you remember what an indirect object is, just think of the verb “give,” which always requires not only something that is being given (direct object), but someone who is receiving that item (indirect object). This is the noun which is indirectly affected by the action or receives some action from the direct object, rather than the subject. ![]() )ĭative: The dative case is most commonly used for indirect objects. ( He ate the apple.)Īccusative: The direct object is the person/thing that the action is directed toward or is receiving the action. Nominative: Remember that the subject of the sentence is the person/thing doing the action. ![]() These are the words you generally think of when you hear “pronouns.” We know that German personal pronouns come in a variety of cases, but English also differentiates the case in this area, making it a great place to start to ease into pronoun cases.Įnglish personal pronouns come in two cases: nominative (for the subject of the sentence) and accusative (for the direct object of the sentence). With personal pronouns you can talk about other people and about yourself. Personal pronouns refer to a person (big surprise). But there will come a certain point when you realize that saying “ den Mann, den ich gestern getroffen habe, von dem ich dir erzählt habe” (“the man who I met yesterday that I told you about”) more than once in one conversation is definitely more work than taking a look at the helpful charts below and learning how to use German pronouns. It’s true – you may be able to get away with avoiding German pronouns for a while by just repeating the whole noun phrase (“the bird,” “my father,” etc.). So, maybe you’re thinking, “I can do without pronouns! They’re technically optional anyway!” The case system in German is one of the most difficult things for English speakers to get comfortable with, because we don’t normally use special forms of the word depending on the part it plays in a given sentence. Because German pronouns change depending on the gender of the noun and case, there are many different versions of each type of pronoun. Warning: There are charts in your future, many charts. Don’t worry – if you need grammar tips or reminders, there are built-in grammar-based challenges in the app as well! Is this really necessary? After that, memorizing the forms becomes easy with the help of technology built especially for that purpose, like Lingvist’s German course. Luckily, the examples below will help you to recognize when to use the different pronouns more clearly. The upside of having cases is that it allows word order to be more flexible, since it’s clear what role each word plays from its case! However, German pronouns come in several more flavors than English, depending on the case (nominative, accusative, etc.), which means there will be a few charts to memorize. Like English, these pronouns need to change to show what type of noun they’re replacing, such as which person (“him” or “her”) and whether it’s singular or plural (“it” or “they”). Note: Indefinite pronouns like “nothing” and relative pronouns like “which” and “whose” are fun, but we don’t want to overwhelm you all at once!
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