Personal Pronouns in German (Personalpronomen)
Personal pronouns in German are used to refer to ourselves other people or things just as used in English.
Pronouns are words that are used to replace nouns in order to avoid repeating the same noun. Therefore, in German, they are also affected by the “case, gender and plural” of the nouns.
Personal Pronouns in German
Personal pronouns are used to represent the noun in the sentence (person, people, thing, things) and are associated with the particular grammatical person.
The Forms of the Personal Pronouns
In the German language, “personalpronomen” is one of the most important topics studied by students as it is extensively used in spoken and written German. They have different forms depending on the grammatical gender, number and person they refer to.
There is the table below shows the usage of personal pronouns according to their noun cases.
| Person | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st singular | ich I | mich me | mir to/for me | meiner mine |
| 2nd singular | du you | dich you | die to/for you | deiner yours |
| 3rd masculine singular | er (der) he / it | ihn him | ihm to/for him | seiner his |
| 3rd feminine singular | sie (die) she / it | sie her | ihr to/for her | ihrer hers |
| 3rd neuter singular | es (das) it | es it | ihm to/for it | seiner its |
| 1st plural | wie we | uns us | uns to/for us | unser ours |
| 2nd familiar plural | ihr you | euch you | euch to/for you | euer yours |
| 3rd plural | sie they | sie them | ihnen to/for them | ihrer theirs |
| Polite singular & plural | Sie you | Sie you | Ihnen to/for you | Ihrer yours |
- As you can see above the table second-person pronouns in the German language has two categories:
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Familiar | du (you) | ihr (you) |
| Polite | Sie (you) | Sie (you) |
The first letter of Sie (with the capital S) is always capitalized no matter where in the sentence, and it is the formal way to address somebody in German. It is used between people who are not acquainted, or in some cases, between people who are acquaintances but know each other only formally.
