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German grammar personal pronouns2/19/2023 These pronouns are equivalent to I/me and we/us in English just with the additional dative form. Here’s a chart that breaks down first-person German pronouns into the different cases and singular versus plural versions. Chances are that if you’re reading this you already have a grasp on first-person pronouns in German, but you may not have thought too deeply about the mechanics of these pronouns. Let’s start with what’s probably the easiest: first-person pronouns. So, what are all the German personal pronouns you can use? First-Person German Pronouns It is missing because the genetive case is only applied to dependent possessive pronouns, not personal pronouns. If you are familiar with the additional German cases, you may be wondering where the genetive case is in this list. There are also dative prepositions that make any noun that follows dative, these apply to pronouns as well! In the sentence “The cashier handed Mike the groceries”, Mike is dative, so when we replace Mike with him like so: “The cashier handed him the groceries”, him is once again dative. In other words, it is the indirect object. When a pronoun is in the dative case it is the recipient of an action, or the “whom” that an action is done for. When the store is substituted for the pronoun it in the sentence “Mike is going to it”, it is accusative as well. In the sentence “Mike is going to the store”, the store is accusative and going is the verb that it’s the direct object of. When a pronoun is in the accusative, it is the direct object of a transitive verb. Therefore, when we replace Mike with the pronoun He in this sentence “He is going to the store”, He is also nominative. In the sentence “Mike is going to the store”, Mike is nominative. In basic terms, when a pronoun is in the nominative, it is the subject that is performing an action. Since the variety of cases are likely the most challenging part about learning personal pronouns in German let’s do a refresher on the three relevant cases and how they operate in respect to pronouns! Nominative (written as Nominativ in German) No need to be overwhelmed, though, I’m going to do my best to break it down into digestible chunks. This is because German has unfamiliar cases and formal versions of pronouns. One of which being that German has more personal pronouns than English. While English and German pronouns function in the same way, there are a few major differences. German pronouns work the same way! German Pronouns Once you’ve established it’s Mike you’re talking about, you can use pronouns to refer to him in following sentences. Mike drove home.” You can say “Mike went to the store. Of course, you never have to replace a noun with a pronoun, but doing so makes the sentence more efficient and natural-sounding (as opposed to being forced to say the noun all the time i.e: “Mike went to the store. “The guy I saw yesterday is going to the store” becomes “He is going to the store” as well.“The man is going to the store” also becomes “He is going to the store”.“Mike is going to the store” becomes “He is going to the store”.They replace the name, noun, or noun phrase of its referent in a sentence. Personal pronouns work the same way in German as they do in English. If you are interested in exploring all types of German pronouns, not just personal pronouns, check out this grammar guide. However, there are other types which include words such as the “self” words like Myself, the indefinite pronouns such as Everybody, and more. These are the kinds of pronouns we will be examining in German in this post. These are personal pronouns, or pronouns used to refer to or substitute the name of the individual speaking or those they are speaking about. The pronouns you’re probably most familiar with in English are words like She, I, You, His, We, and Them. Merriam-Webster defines pronouns as follows: (Photo by Patrick Perkins) What Are Pronouns?įirst things first, let’s crack into the basics of what a pronoun is and how it functions before worrying about how German pronouns are used. In this post I’m going to walk you through an important part of German grammar: German pronouns! This doesn’t need to be a scary process though, as long as you break it down into manageable parts. Learning a language’s grammar is not always intuitive to a native speaker of another language. It becomes time to delve into the dreaded world of grammar. When you reach the part of your language learning journey where just knowing vocabulary and a few key phrases is no longer enough, things can start to seem intimidating.
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