Klunkerkranich: the coolest roof-top-bar in Berlin
3 de September de 2016
Dimitris’ Diary: Dresden, the treasure of East Germany.
6 de September de 2016
Hi, folks!
The post today brings the personal pronouns in German. Learning these pronouns, added to verbs and articles (which has been talked about in the last article), it will be a big step to start forming more developed sentences.
Personal Pronouns (Nominative case)
See the table with the personal pronouns in German in the nominative, which is the first grammatical case to be studied.
1st person (singular and plural)
2nd person (singular and plural)
3rd person (singular and plural)
| PERSONAL PRONOUN | TRANSLATION |
| ich | I |
| du Sie |
you you (formal) |
| er sie es |
he she it |
| wir | we |
| ihr Sie |
you you (formal) |
| sie | they |
Please note that the pronoun “sie” appears in three situations:
- 3rd person of singular: “sie” (lower case), that means “she”;
- 3rd person of plural: “sie” (lower case), that means “they”;
- 2nd person of singular/plural: “Sie” (capital), that means “you”, here used in formal situations, replacing the nouns “du” and “ihr”.
Since the pronunciation is the same, what will differentiate a situation from another, especially in cases in which are written the same way (3rd person singular and plural), is precisely the conjugation of the verb that follows this pronoun. For the formal use of 2nd person, what will differentiate if it is a case of singular or plural is the context of the conversation, since the two forms and conjugations are identical.
To give an example, we brought the conjugation in indicative’s present of the verb “sein”, which means “to be” and the verb “haben”, which means “to have”.
Just as curiosity, the verb “sein” is irregular, like it is, for example, the verb “to be” in the English language. The verb “haben” presents a regular conjugation, highlighted in red in the table below, that will be taken as a base for the conjugation of so many other regular verbs in German.
| VERB “SEIN” | TRANSLATION | VERB “HABEN” | TRANSLATION |
| ich bin | I am | ich habe | I have |
| du bist Sie sind |
you are | du hast Sie haben |
you have |
| er ist | he is | er hat | he has |
| sie ist | she is | sie hat | she has |
| es ist | it is | es hat | it has |
| wir sind | we are | wir haben | we have |
| ihr seid Sie sind |
you are | ihr habt Sie haben |
you have |
| sie sind | they are | sie haben | they have |
Examples (pronouns highlighted in blue and verbs in red):
1) Ich bin Amerikaner.
I am American.
2) Du bist schön!
You are beautiful!
3) Wir haben ein nettes Haus.
We have a nice house.
4) Ihr habt meine Freundschaft.
You have my friendship.
5) Ist sie glückclich? (sie lower, 3rd person of singular)
Is she happy?
6) Sind sie glückclich? (sie lower, 3rd person of plural)
Are they happy?
7) Sind Sie glückclich? (Sie capital, 2nd person of singular/plural)
Are you happy?
That’s all for today, guys!
Do you want to know more about the German language? Leave your comment below with the topics you would like us to bring in the next classes! 🙂