![]() Since the variety of cases are likely the most challenging part about learning personal pronouns in German let’s do a refresher on the three relevant cases and how they operate in respect to pronouns! Nominative (written as Nominativ in German) No need to be overwhelmed, though, I’m going to do my best to break it down into digestible chunks. This is because German has unfamiliar cases and formal versions of pronouns. One of which being that German has more personal pronouns than English. While English and German pronouns function in the same way, there are a few major differences. German pronouns work the same way! German Pronouns Once you’ve established it’s Mike you’re talking about, you can use pronouns to refer to him in following sentences. Mike drove home.” You can say “Mike went to the store. Of course, you never have to replace a noun with a pronoun, but doing so makes the sentence more efficient and natural-sounding (as opposed to being forced to say the noun all the time i.e: “Mike went to the store. “The guy I saw yesterday is going to the store” becomes “He is going to the store” as well.“The man is going to the store” also becomes “He is going to the store”.“Mike is going to the store” becomes “He is going to the store”.They replace the name, noun, or noun phrase of its referent in a sentence. Personal pronouns work the same way in German as they do in English. If you are interested in exploring all types of German pronouns, not just personal pronouns, check out this grammar guide. However, there are other types which include words such as the “self” words like Myself, the indefinite pronouns such as Everybody, and more. These are the kinds of pronouns we will be examining in German in this post. These are personal pronouns, or pronouns used to refer to or substitute the name of the individual speaking or those they are speaking about. The pronouns you’re probably most familiar with in English are words like She, I, You, His, We, and Them. Merriam-Webster defines pronouns as follows: ![]() (Photo by Patrick Perkins) What Are Pronouns?įirst things first, let’s crack into the basics of what a pronoun is and how it functions before worrying about how German pronouns are used. In this post I’m going to walk you through an important part of German grammar: German pronouns! This doesn’t need to be a scary process though, as long as you break it down into manageable parts. Learning a language’s grammar is not always intuitive to a native speaker of another language. It becomes time to delve into the dreaded world of grammar. Their use is also dependent upon the object you are describing in the sentence and its place in the sentence.When you reach the part of your language learning journey where just knowing vocabulary and a few key phrases is no longer enough, things can start to seem intimidating. The only difference between mein and meine lies in their gender where mein is used for the masculine gender while meine is used for feminine gender. It is also meine eltern for my parents as the pronoun is in the plural in this example.īoth mein and meine are used in German, to indicate possession or ownership, and they are possessive pronouns. So my mother becomes meine mutter while my father remains mein Vater. Meine is used to indicate feminine gender or plural form. Possession or ownership of an object is indicated using possessive pronoun and the word mein is used. As far as genitive form is concerned, the pronoun for the masculine gender is meines and meiner for the feminine gender. For the dative form, the masculine gender possessive pronoun is meinem and is the same for the feminine gender. As far as accusative form is concerned, the words are meinen for the masculine gender and meine for the feminine gender. This is true for the nominative form of the pronoun. Mein stands for my and remains as such for the masculine gender while it becomes meine for the feminine gender. It is the use of the possessive pronouns mein and meine that confuse people the most. German grammar is full of pronouns of various types such as personal, possessive, interrogative, reflexive, relative, and indefinite pronouns. This article attempts to highlight the differences between mein and meine. Many students of German remain especially confused between mein and meine. There are, however, other words used for same pronoun ‘My’ such as Meine, meinen, meines, etc. As the title of the book suggests, Mein Kampf translates into My Battle in English. If you have read or heard about the autobiography Mein Kampf, you probably know that Mein in German means my.
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