German
personal pronouns are
easy to remember and they are almost identical to those in English.Personal Pronouns
German
|
English
|
Example
|
|---|---|---|
Nominative
Singular
|
||
ich
|
I
|
Ich
komme aus Berlin. (I come from Berlin)
|
du
|
you
(informal)
|
Wie
alt bist du? (How old are you?)
|
er
|
he
|
Wer
ist er? (Who is he?)
|
sie
|
she
|
Wo
ist sie? (Where is she?)
|
es
|
it
|
Was
ist es? (What it is?)
|
Sie
|
you
(formal)
|
Woher
kommen Sie? (Where are you from?)
Formal "Sie" is same as infinitive and plural conjugation. |
Nominative
Plural
|
||
Wir
|
we
|
Wir
gehen ins kino. (We are going to conema)
|
ihr
|
you
guys (informal)
|
Wohnt
ihr da? (Do you guys live here?)
|
sie
|
they
|
Woher
kommen sie? (Where are they from?)
Plural conjugation is same as infinitive and formal "Sie". |
Sie
|
you
(plural)
|
Woher
kommen Sie? (Where are you:all come from?)
Same as infinitive and formal "Sie". |
Now we will try to use just learned German personal pronouns with some basic verbs.
The infinitive form of verbs looks like this: “root”+en. For example – lernen, wohnen, kommen:
- First-person singular is ich. Generally the form of verb is “root“+e. Ich lerne, ich wohne, ich komme.
- Second-person singular – du – informal. “root”+st. Du lernst, du wohnst, du kommst.
- Second-person singular+plural – Sie – formal. Same as infinitive. Sie lernen, wohnen, kommen.
- Third-person singular (he, she, it) – er, sie, es. “root”+t. Er/sie/es lernt, wohnt, kommt.
- First-person plural (we) – wir. Same as infinitive. Wir lernen, wohnen, kommen.
- Second-person plural-informal (you guys) – ihr. “first-person sing.”+t. Irh lernt, wohnt, kommt.
- Second-person plural (you) – sie. Same as infinitive. Wir lernen, wohnen, kommen.
Happy learning!
Quick
note about “you” in German. Unlike English, German has formal
“you” – Sie and informal (familiar) – du. You have to
remember it and try not to forget about it. We’ll speak about it in
the next lessons but here is a simple rule: Use “du” if you know
person good or he asked you to call him so. Otherwise, use “Sie”.
We’ll
show German personal pronouns in the table below and they will be in
the nominative case. There are other cases as well but we need to
know the basics first.
