Pronouns

Pronouns

German Pronouns Declined Nomina- tive Ac- cusative Dative Genitive Possessive Pronoun Singular
I ich mich mir meiner meinYou (informal singular) du dich dir deiner deinHe er ihn ihm seiner seinIt es es ihm seiner seinShe sie sie ihr ihrer ihrPlural
We (us) wir uns uns unser unserYou (informal plural) ihr euch euch euer euer- (shortened to eur- for
"eure")
They sie sie ihnen ihrer ihrYou (formal - singular or plural) Sie Sie Ihnen Ihrer Ihr264
Contents

Note: The possessive is not a case of the personal pronoun, rather it's a pronoun itself.
This table shows the possessive pronoun's stem, which is declined as an ein-word (like the
indefinite article).

The genitive case indicates possession or association, and is equivalent to, and replaces, the
English word "of". "Des" and "der" (do not confuse with masculine singular nominative)
mean "of the"; "eines" and "einer" mean "of a/an"; and, "der Sohn guten Weins" means
"the son of good wine" (no article, M, Gen strong adj). Strict replacement of the genitive
case with the word "of" maintains the word-order of the German nominal phrase: possessed
- possessor (in genitive). The genitive case also replaces "'s" in English, though reversing
the word-order (in English: possessor's possessed). German itself also uses an "s" (though
without the apostrophe) to indicate possession, in the same word order as English. It is
used mainly with proper nouns, such as "Goethes Heimat", as well as for compounding
words.

Standard genitive constructions are used with nouns and modifiers of nouns such as articles
and adjectives, and the inflection they receive implies possession. The first noun may be in
any case and may occur in any part of the sentence; the second noun, which possesses the
first noun, immediately follows the first noun, and is in the genitive case. The noun in the
genitive case need not have any modifiers - e.g., Heimat Goethes, Heimat Katerina, which
mean the homeland of Goethe and Katerina, respectively - though such constructions can
be cumbersome and ambiguous.

Proper treatment of the genitive case, including all of the declensions, is found in another
part of this book.

German pronouns have genitive forms, but they are used only rarely nowadays, mostly in
archaic or formal German. In many cases, a preposition can be added to allow a different
case to be used.

Ich erinnere mich ihrer. (I remember her)

Also possible: Ich erinnere mich an sie.

Wir gedachten seiner. (We thought of him)

Also possible: Wir dachten an ihn.

Herr, erbarme dich unser! (Lord, have mercy upon us)

Also possible: Herr, erbarme dich über uns.

The possessive pronouns (mein-, dein-, unser-, etc.) are almost identical in form to the
genitive pronouns and but they directly modify their attribute and could be conceived of
as adjectives, though they decline differently. Alternatively, one could think of possessive
pronouns, e.g., "mein-", as replacing the phrase, "of me". Directly translated, "mein-"
means "my" in English.

Examples:

I want the teacher's book. Let's rewrite this as: I want the book of the
teacher.

-Ich will das Buch des Lehrers (der Lehrerin).

--The genitive case here is masculine (feminine) singular, inflecting the definite article
(des/der) as well as the noun (Lehrer (+s), but not Lehrerin, which doesn't change because
it is feminine).

Without his friend's car, we cannot go home.
-Ohne den Wagen seines Freundes können wir nicht nach Hause fahren.

--Here, two possessive relationships are mentioned. The car belongs to the friend, and
the friend belongs to "him". For illustrative purposes, one could conceivably re-write the
prepositional phrase as "without the car (accusitive case) of the friend of him". German's
rendering is far less awkward.

The wall of the building is old and brown.

-Die Wand des Gebäudes ist alt und braun.

--As in the first example, the genitive case here is in the masculine singular, and inflects
the definite article and the noun (M,N add +s/+es in the genitive case).