German pronouns describe a set of 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....

 words with specific functions, such as being the subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

 of a clause, or relating the main clause to a subordinate one.
Germanic pronouns are divided in to six groups;

• Personal pronoun
  Personal pronoun
  Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
  
  s, which adverts an entity, such as the speaker or third parties;
• Possessive pronoun
  Possessive pronoun
  A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
  
  s, which describe ownership of objects, institutions, etc.;
• Interrogative pronouns, which are used in questions, such as who?;
• Reflexive pronoun
  Reflexive pronoun
  A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
  
  s, in which the subject is also one of the objects;
• Relative pronoun
  Relative pronoun
  A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
  
  s, which connect clauses;
• Indefinite pronoun
  Indefinite pronoun
  An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that refers to one or more unspecified beings, objects, or places.-List of English indefinite pronouns:Note that many of these words can function as other parts of speech too, depending on context...
  
  s, which denote entities of quantities.

The German personal pronouns must always have the same 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...

, same number

Grammatical number

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

, 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 third person genitive plural of the possessive pronoun is applied in those cases. These forms are bracketed. The genitive object, other than accusative or dative objects, is somewhat outdating:

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 in 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 Nationalsozialismus gedenken." (Let us commemorate the victims of 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
Case	First Person	Second Person	Third Person			First Person	Second Person	Third Person	(Singular and Plural)
(English)	I	you	he	she	it	we	you	they	you
Nominative	ich	du	er	sie	es	wir	ihr	sie	Sie
Accusative	mich	dich	ihn	sie	es	uns	euch	sie	Sie
Dative	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 (i.e. with the infinitive of the verb). 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.

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

The third-person plural pronoun is used for formal speaking. It can be used to address a single person as well as multiple persons. It the former case, it is capitalized in written German, but pronounced the same when spoken; only the context determines which meaning is intended.

"Ich grüße Sie" ["Hello" (formal). Literally: "I greet you".]

Genitive personal pronouns (which are themselves rather the borrowed genitive forms from the possessive pronouns) never indicate possession, which is not only outdated but wrong. That is, my book translates to "mein Buch", or "das Buch von mir" (the latter would be quite identical to the book of me); and never "das Buch meiner". These pronouns may be used for the genitive object ("gedenke meiner": commemorate me), or the rare instances of genitivus objectivus. Archaically, the unflected possessive pronoun can be used instead, e. g. Vergißmeinnicht

Forget-me-not

Myosotis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae that are commonly called Forget-me-nots. Its common name was calqued from the French, "ne m'oubliez pas" and first used in English in c. 1532. Similar names and variations are found in many languages.-Description:There are...

 (instead of: "vergiß meiner nicht" or – vergessen takes the accusative as well—"vergiß mich nicht" in more modern form). Another place where they are used is after prepositions requiring the genitive case, e. g. "seitens meiner" (on my part). However, many of these prepositions can anyway, at least in more colloquial usage, be constructed with the dative, which however is no personal pronoun issue (e.g. "statt mir" instead of "statt meiner"). Ironically, the Bavarian dialect never uses wegen (because of), which in Standard German must take the genitive, otherwise than with a dative, with the very one exception of personal pronouns, where "wegen meiner" (as indicating "von mir aus", if you bother what I will think about it, it's all right) is not altogether unknown.

Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns are formed by adding endings to the genitive case of the personal pronoun. The endings are identical to those of the indefinite article ein.
{|class="wikitable"
!colspan="5"|Example: mein (my)
|-
!
!Masculine
!Feminine
!Neuter
!Plurals
|-
!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...

|mein
|meine
|mein
|meine
|-
!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...

|meinen
|meine
|mein
|meine
|-
!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"....

|meinem
|meiner
|meinem
|meinen
|-
!genitive

Genitive case

In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

|meines
|meiner
|meines
|meiner
|-
NB: same goes for dein- sein- ...etc

Pronouns derived from articles

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

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

{| class="wikitable"
!
! 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.)

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:

{| class="wikitable"
!
! 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 had been the preferable use in Latin sentences as well as in Old High German

Old High German

The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...

 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.

had better been 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

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

pronouns are used to refer to something already defined.

diese (this, the former)

jene (that, the latter)

erstere (the former)

Use ersterer to refer to masculine nouns; erstere otherwise

letztere (the latter)

Use letzterer to refer to masculine nouns; letztere otherwise

derjenige (the one)

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

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

derselbe (the same)

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

Used to indicate an identity stronger than der gleiche would.

External links

• Summary sheet to learn the article and the pronoun.