German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 article

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

s are similar in most respects to English articles

English articles

The articles are words that combine with a noun to indicate the degree of definiteness of the reference being made by the noun. The articles in English include the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an...

. However, they are declined differently according to the number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

, gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

, and case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

 of their nouns.

Declension

The inflected forms depend on the number, the case and the gender of the corresponding noun. Articles have the same plural forms for all three genders.

Indefinite article endings (mixed)

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...	ein	ein	eine	-eine
Accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...	einen	ein	eine	-eine
Dative Dative case The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....	einem	einem	einer	-einen
Genitive Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...	eines	eines	einer	-einer

• This table declines the indefinite article (ein-), the negative indefinite article (kein-), and the possessive pronouns (mein-, dein-, sein-, ihr-, unser-, euer/eur-).
• The indefinite article does not have a specific plural form (like English, but unlike Italian); there are several article words for this need. In most cases, however, these plural forms are left out. This is quite similar to English.

Definite article (strong)

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

Definite article endings (strong)

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	-er	-es	-e	-e
Accusative	-en	-es	-e	-e
Dative	-em	-em	-er	-en
Genitive	-es	-es	-er	-er

• Note that this is essentially the same as the indefinite article table, but with the masculine nominative -er and the neuter nominative and accusative -es.
• This table declines the demonstrative pronouns (dies-, jen-) (this, that; strong) and the relative pronoun (welch-) (which; strong)

Possessive "article-like" pronouns

Under some circumstances (e.g. in a relative clause

Relative clause

A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...

) the regular possessive pronouns are replaced by the genitive forms of the pronouns derived from the definite article.
They agree in number and gender with the possessor. Unlike other pronouns they carry no strength. Any adjective following them in the phrase will carry the strong endings.

There are possessive pronouns derived from the definite article and derived from the interrogative article. They have the same forms for all cases of the possessed word, but they are only rarely used in the genitive case.

Definite possessive [of the] (mixed)

• Masculine: dessen
• Neuter: dessen
• Feminine: deren
• Plural: deren

Interrogative possessive [of what] (mixed)

• Masculine: wessen
• Neuter: wessen
• Feminine: wessen
• Plural: wessen

NOT: Die Soldaten dessen Armee

Up until the 18th century, a genitive noun was often used instead of a possessive pronoun. This is occasionally found in very literary modern German, and sometimes hence used for facetious effect.

OLD: "Des Königs Krone" (The king's crown)

(MODERN: "Die Krone des Königs" - BUT: "Die Königskrone" (compound noun))

These pronouns are used if using the ordinary possessive pronoun is understood reflexively, or there are several possessors.