Personal and possesive pronouns and their declension

As previously mentioned, in German pronouns change with number, gender and case. This holds for personal as well as possessive pronouns.  

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. In case of subject pronouns, the pronoun takes the place of a person. To understand it better, remember that the subject pronouns in English are I, you, he, she, it, we and they.

Let’s start with learning German personal pronouns in the simple form, i.e. nominative form.

German personal pronouns in nominative

The personal pronoun for you requires further explanation. In English, we have only one version. As shown in the table above, there are three versions of you in German: du, ihr and Sie. First of all, whether you are addressing only one person or more than one person makes a difference in the German languge. While you may address a person or a group of people in English as you, in German you need to use a different word in this situation. “du” or “Sie” is used when addressing only one person and “ihr” or “Sie” is used when addressing more than one person. The second point you need to consider is that you should use a different pronoun depending on whether it’s handled with formal or informal situations. That means, if you speak to someone whom you are familiar with, use “du”. If you speak to a group of people whom you are familiar with, use “ihr”, for example when you are talking with your friends. If the situation is formal, always use “Sie”, whether it’s handled with one person or a group of people.

Note also the spelling of the personal pronouns. The formal “you” is always written in capital letters, regardless of the position in a sentence “Sie”. As you will notice below, the same rule applies when the formal you is used in other cases as well, i.e. Ihnen, Ihrer.

Other cases

The subject pronouns will undergo a change when used in other cases. We have such changes in English as well. For example, think about the sententence, I saw her yesterday. In this sentence, you don’t use “she”, instead you use “her”. Because when the verb “see” is used, you need to change the subject pronoun accordingly.  Such situations are more pronounced in German. Since there are totally four cases.

The declension of the personal pronouns is given in the following table:

A very important thing you need to keep in mind about German personal pronouns is the following. While the personal pronouns ich, du, wir, ihr, Sie and their accusative and dative counterparts can only refer to people, the other pronouns (er, sie, es) can be used to refer to things as well. Note also that the genitive is not used today anymore. It’s found in the old literature and in some religious phrases. 

Let’s give an example to see how the personal pronouns are used in different cases. Let’s take the German verb for “to see” (sehen). This verb is used in accusative form so that

• Ich habe dich gestern gesehen (I saw you yesterday)
• Ich habe ihn gestern gesehen (I saw him yesterday)
• Ich habe sie gestern gesehen (I saw her/they yesterday)

Possessive Pronouns

As in English, possessive pronouns are used to define the owner of a thing. For example, take the English sentence “This is my book”. The word “my” in this sentence is called the possessive pronoun.

Since such words are followed by a substantive the ending must change according to the gender of the substantive. Let’s take the above example sentence in German:

• Das ist mein Buch (this is my book)

In the sentence above mein is my. However, in case you want to say this is my bag in German, you don’t use mein, but you use meine:

• Das ist meine Tasche (this is my bag)

That means, if the substantive following the possessive pronoun is feminine “meine” is used. If the substantive is plural, some modifications may apply as well. For example, although one use “das is mein Buch”, these are my books are said like “diese sind meine Bücher”. Thus, the pronoun has to agree with the number as well.

The above examples are for the nominative case. For the other three cases, different endings might be used. But let’s first sum up all the possessive pronouns for the nominative case to start with.

The following table shows the possessive pronouns in case they are followed by a singular substantive. In such a case, you need to modify the ending according to the gender of the singular noun:

Note that the pronouns are the same for the masculine and neuter nouns is the same in nominative case.

Note also that as shown previously, the pronouns corresponding to formal you are written with capitals: Ihr, Ihre.

In case the possessive pronouns are followed by a plural substantive, they end always in “-e”, regardless of the gender of the substantive that follows:

meine, deine, seine, ihre, seine, uns(e)re, eure, ihre, Ihre

To learn the rules regarding the plural nouns, have a look at this lesson.

Declension

Let’s take “mein” as an example to see how the declensions are in the other cases.

As in the case of nominative, the endings are the same for masculine, feminine and neuter nouns if the substantive is plural.

The endings are just the same for all the other possessive pronouns.

Exercises

Fill in the blanks

Wie geht's ----? (how are you?)

Das Haus gehört --- Mutter (the house belong to my mother)

Wo ist --- Tasche? (Where is my bag?)