Previous ➥ lesson 5 ➥ Next

Pronouns in German

(Die Pronomen)

List of all topics in the level A1

This lesson contains topics:

1. German personal pronouns in the nominative case
2. Possessive pronouns in the nominative case
3. Demonstrative pronouns in the nominative case

Note for the visitors who have directly landed on this page from the search engine, this page is part of the step-by-step German learning course at level A1. To see the complete explaination of German pronouns, please visit the page German Pronouns under the section Summary of German Grammar.

A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. For example, in the English language, Harry is a doctor. He lives in London. The word “he” is a personal pronoun. Like in English, German also has four categories of pronouns i.e. personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and reflexive pronouns.

Personal pronouns

Personalpronomen

Personal pronouns are used to represent a specific person/persons or a thing/things and are associated with the particular grammatical person, i.e. 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person.

In the English language personal pronouns are I, we, you, etc. Personal pronouns can be subject pronouns and object pronouns. In the German language, the subject is "der Nominativ" and the object is the "der Akkusativ". (These names, nominative case, and accusative case are also used in the English language.)

Subject pronouns replace the name of the subject in the sentence. These are I, you, he, she, it, we, and they. For example, we are going to the market. He is a doctor. In German, subject pronouns (pronouns in the nominative case) are:

Personal pronouns in the nominative case

Two forms of 2nd-person pronoun

As you can see second-person pronouns in the German language has two categories:

Sie (with the capital S) is the formal form. It is used in official writings and talks. When you don’t know somebody or even not familiar with somebody, you would address him/her “Sie”.

du is used when people know each other closely, for example family members use “du” for each other. Similarly students at same level in a school or university use “du”. Office colleagues at the same level of a job use “du” but seniors or junior colleagues are normally addressed as “Sie”.

If you are not sure which form is to be used, “Sie” is always on safer side.

Important: Apart from the second-person pronoun "Sie", there are two more “sie” pronouns in German. “sie” with small “s” is used for “she” and “they”. The structure of the sentence helps to recognize whether it’s “she” or “they”. Confusion may occur when “Sie” is written at the beginning of a new sentence because every new sentence begins with a capital letter. In this case, the context and structure of the sentence tell the nature of “Sie”. For example,

Das ist Frau Lisa Müller. Sie ist Professorin. (This is Mrs. Lisa Müller. She is a professor.)

In the above example, “Sie” (she) has to be capitalized because it is coming at the beginning of the sentence. In this sentence, the context of “Sie” and the grammatical structure of the sentence are telling us the meaning, because “ist” (is) can’t be used with second-person pronouns.

Object pronouns replace the object of the sentence. (Object is a noun that receives the action in the sentence.) Object pronouns in English are: me, you, her, him, it, us, and them. The objective case in German is called "Akkusativ". As this course is step by step and we haven’t learned verbs yet. So German personal pronouns in the accusative case (objective pronouns) will be discussed in chapter 14 (Pronouns in accusative), after the discussion of the accusative case.

Possessive pronouns in the nominative case

Possessive pronouns show possession. In English, possessive pronouns are my, your, his, her, its, our, your, and their.
Their German counterparts are:

`

Again, we can see 2nd person polite form, 3rd Person feminine, and 3rd person plural has the same possessive pronoun, but the difference is the capitalization of 2nd person polite form.

Adding an ending "-e" with feminine and plural pronouns

When showing possession of feminine and plural nouns, an ending “-e” is added to possessive pronouns.

For example:

Sie ist meine Schwester. Ihr Name ist Katja. (She is my sister. Her name is Katja.)

Er ist mein Bruder. Sein Name ist Sebastian. (He is my brother. His name is Sebastian.)

Lisa ist seine Frau. (Lisa is his wife.)

Thomas ist ihr Sohn. (Thomas is their son.)

Ana ist ihre Tochter. (Ana is their daughter.)

Jan und Julia sind ihre Nachbarn. (Jan and Julia are their neighbors. Sind means are)

Explanation of above examples:

Sie ist meine Schwester. Ihr Name ist Kathja.
"die Schwester" (sister) is a feminine noun, and requires an ending "-e" with any possessive pronoun coming before it.

Er ist mein Bruder. Sein Name ist Sebastian.
Both nouns, i.e. "der Bruder" (borther) and "der Name" (name) are masculine nouns, therefore no ending “-e” is required.

Lisa ist seine Frau.
"die Frau" (woman / Mrs. / wife) is a feminine noun, so an ending “-e” is required here.

Thomas ist ihr Sohn.
der Sohn (son) is a masculine noun and possessive pronoun “ihr” before the masculine noun requires no “-e” ending.
The translation of this sentence can be:

1. Thomas is their son.
2. Thomas is her son.

The context of the word "ihr" in the sentence shows whether "ihr" is being used as "her" or "their".
This "ihr" is clearly not a second-person pronoun "you", because it is not capitalized.

Ana ist ihre Tochter.
"die Tochter" (daughter) is a feminine noun and the possessive pronoun before feminine noun requires an ending “-e”.

Jan und Julia sind ihre Nachbarn.
die Nachbarn (neighbors) is a plural noun. Possessive pronoun before plural nouns also require an ending “-e”.

In the accusative case (direct object case) and dative case (indirect object case), some personal pronouns change their endings. These topics will be discussed under lesson 14 (Pronouns in accusative) and lesson 20 (Pronouns in dative).

Demonstrative pronouns in the nominative case

Demonstrative pronouns are the words like “this”, “that”, “these” and “those”. Demonstrative pronouns are used to distinguish specific thing/things or person/persons from others. Demonstrative pronouns in German for the English words “that” and "that" are the same as the German definite articles i.e. der, die, das, and die (plural).

Examples:

Der Mann ist mein Bruder. (That man is my brother.)

Die sind meine Eltern. (That are my parents.)

Die sind meine Kinder. (That are my children.)

For the English word this, German has a word dieser. It is explained further in the following table.

Examples:

Diese Frau ist seine Schwester. (This woman is his sister.)

Dieser Mann ist mein Bruder. (This man is my brother.)

Diese Kinder sind in Gruppe eins. (These children are in group one.)

Dieses Mädchen ist auch in Gruppe eins. (This girl is also in group one.)
"Das Mädchen" is a neuter noun.

Reflexive pronouns

A reflexive pronoun act either as an object or an indirect object. In English, reflexive pronouns are myself, yourself, himself, herself, oneself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. Since all reflexive pronouns are in the objective case (accusative case), they will be discussed after the explanation of German accusative case.

Previous ➥ lesson 5 ➥ Next

⌃