Nouns, pronouns and articles
Pronouns
Pronouns can be divided into two main groups: personal and impersonal.
Personal pronouns
As the name suggests, personal pronouns refer to people.
| ich | I | wir | we |
| du | you (singular, familiar) | ihr | you (plural, familiar) |
| Sie | you (singular, polite) | Sie | you (plural, polite) |
| er | he | sie | they (masculine and feminine, plural) |
| sie | she |
Saying 'you' in German
As you can see from the table above, there are different ways of saying 'you' in German.
Use 'du' (singular) and 'ihr' (plural) when talking to close friends and relatives and to children, people you would naturally call by their first name.
Use the 'Sie' (both singular and plural), when talking to adult strangers and other adults in positions of authority, people you would naturally address by 'Mr' or 'Mrs'.
NB: Note that 'Sie' used in this way always has a capital letter.
Impersonal pronouns
Impersonal pronouns are used as a substitute for nouns referring to things: 'it' and 'they' in English.
As we have already seen in the section on nouns, nouns which are neuter in English, referring to things, can in German be masculine, feminine or neuter. In the same way, pronouns which replace these nouns must also become masculine, feminine or neuter.
| it | er (m) |
| sie (f) | |
| es (n) | |
| they | sie (plural, all genders) |
NB: Try to avoid the temptation to always use 'es' for 'it' when referring to things.
| Sentence using the noun | Sentence using the impersonal pronoun | Gender/number | English translations |
| Das ist mein neuer Pullover. | Er ist schön, nicht wahr? | (m) | That is my new pullover. It is nice, isn't it? |
| Ich mag deine neue Jacke. | Sie ist sehr schön. | (f) | I like your new jacket. It is very nice. |
| Dein neues Hemd gefällt mir. | Es ist sehr schön. | (n) | I like your new shirt. It is very nice. |
| Deine neuen Kleider finde ich schön. | Ja, sie sind sehr hübsch. | (plural) | I think your new clothes are nice. Yes, they are very pretty. |