This ambiguity also occurs when the word is at beginning of a sentence. ![]() Note that in spoken German, sie and Sie sound the same, so without additional context it's impossible to tell the two apart. In general, while there is a certain correlation between feminine and plural forms, there are are enough exceptions that you should not take this to be any kind of rule. ![]() The third person plural pronoun is the same as the feminine, sie, but this should be regarded as a coincidence. They are er (masculine singular), sie (feminine singular), es (neuter singular). There are three third person singular personal pronouns in German, one for each of the three German genders. In this case, as with English "you", there is no distinction between singular are plural. First note that this is always capitalized, similar to the way that the English "I" is always capitalized. The only second person polite personal pronouns is Sie (singular and plural). (Some varieties of English have a second person plural, for example in American Southern English the plural form "y'all" is often used.) Note that, unlike English, German makes a distinction between second person singular and second person plural. So if you're referring to just the person you're talking to then use du, and if you're referring to a group of people including the person you're talking to then use ihr. The second person familiar personal pronouns are du (singular) and ihr (plural). polite, so there is a large grey area and when in doubt you should listen to how you are addressed and how your peers address others. But there are no exact criteria for when to use familiar vs. Polite is used with strangers and people for whom you want to show respect. In normal conversation, familiar is used with family, friends, coworkers you know well, small children, etc. Unlike English, but like many other languages, the German second person comes in two flavors, familiar and polite. Second person familiar versus polite Edit Note that ich is only capitalized at the start of a sentence. So if you’re taking about yourself alone then you use the first person singular, ich, and if you’re talking about yourself as included in a group of people then you use the first person plural, wir. As in English, which one to use depends only on number. The first person personal pronouns in German are ich ("I") and wir ("we"). The pronouns by person Edit First person Edit It refers to the grammatical gender which, as mentioned in the introduction, is different than the natural gender ("he", "she", "it") used in English. In German, gender only applies to the third person (as in English). Number is the distinction between one (singular) and more than one (plural), for example "I" is singular and "we" is plural. For example, in English "I" is first person, "you" is second person, and "he" is third person. Person identifies whether the pronoun is referring to the person speaking (first person), the person being spoken to (second person), or some other person or thing not included in the conversation (third person). ![]() There are four cases in German, whose functions will be covered later, and to avoid information overload we’ll only be talking about what it called the nominative case in this section. Which personal pronoun to use in a German sentence depends on four factors, the case, the person, the number, and in some cases, the gender. Pronouns, in turn, can be used to form a noun phrase, the phrases that tell you what a sentence talks about, as opposed to verbs which describe the action that is taking place. Personal pronouns are one category of pronouns as you might guess, there are other categories including impersonal pronouns as well as a few other types which will be covered elsewhere. For example, "I", "you", "she" and "it" are personal pronouns in English. Personal pronouns are the small words used to refer to someone or something else without using the name. With these, and a few verbs, to be covered in the next section, you can start forming your own sentences without actually knowing a lot of vocabulary. The first step will be personal pronouns, the most basic type of pronoun. ![]() We're going to organize the material here by starting with the basic elements and then discussing how to put them together into more and more complex and interesting combinations.
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