German pronouns

German pronouns are German words that function as pronouns. As with pronouns in other languages, they are frequently employed as the subject or object of a clause, acting as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, but are also used in relative clauses to relate the main clause to a subordinate one.

Classification and usage
Germanic pronouns are divided into several groups;
Personal pronouns, which apply to an entity, such as the speaker or third parties;
Possessive pronouns, which describe ownership of objects, institutions, etc.;
Demonstrative pronouns;
Determinative pronouns;
Reflexive pronouns, in which the subject is also one of the objects;
Relative pronouns, which connect clauses;
Interrogative pronouns, which are used in questions, such as who?;
Indefinite pronouns, which denote entities of quantities.

With few exceptions, German pronouns must always have the same gender, same number, and same case as their antecedents.

In German, a pronoun may have a certain position in the sentence under special circumstances. First and second person pronouns usually do not, and they can be used anywhere in the sentence—except in certain poetical or informal contexts.

  (the thing in the cupboard)
  (the thing on the table)

There are also genitive direct objects. But the genitive object, other than accusative or dative objects, is somewhat outdated:

 OLD:  (MODERN: ) (I remember her.)
 OLD:  (MODERN: )
 OLD:  (MODERN: )

In Modern German,  rather takes the prepositional phrase with the preposition . However, some verbs cannot be constructed otherwise, and thus genitive objects remain common language to some degree. This is true for  (which is archaic in itself), but also for sentences such as:

 OLD AND MODERN:  (Let us commemorate the victims.)
 OLD AND MODERN:  (I accuse Mr. John Doe of murder.)

The two noun and pronoun emphasizers  and  have slightly different meanings than if used with nominal phrases. They normally emphasize the pronoun, but if they are applied to a reflexive pronoun (in the objective case), they emphasize its reflexive meaning.

Personal pronouns

The verbs following the formal form of "you"—""—are conjugated identically as in the third-person plurals. For example, "" This means either "You speak German" or "They speak German", and it is completely up to the context to determine which one it is. "" is third person female, this is shown by the change of "en" to "t" in the action (i.e., "" vs. ""), not context.

"" – "" (When is your birthday? – It is tomorrow. Overliterally: He is tomorrow.)
"" – "" (I am calling the dog – I am calling it. Overliterally: I am calling him.)

The first of these is an example of gender-based pronoun usage that may not be intuitive to an English speaker because in English an inanimate object is almost always referenced by the pronoun "it."  In German, nouns always have a relevant gender to consider. In the above examples, both birthday and dog are masculine, so "it" becomes "" in the nominative case and "" in accusative.

Genitive personal pronouns (not to be confused with other instances of the genitive case such as ""—see below) are sometimes explained as indicating possession; however, this is incorrect and redundant, as the definition of a possessive pronoun () is already to indicate possession. For example, my book translates to "", or "" (the latter an alternate formulation translated literally as the book from/of me), and never "".

The genitive personal pronouns in the table above find very seldom use in modern German and are nearly always made obsolete by modern formulations. There is a well-known German saying "" (The dative case is the death of the genitive case), referring to the frequent colloquial replacement of traditionally genitive formulations with dative formulations (e.g. "" instead of ""). Genitive personal pronouns may be used for the genitive object ("": commemorate me). Archaically, the pronoun form without  can be used, e.g.  (instead of: "" or— takes the accusative as well—"" in more modern form). Another use is after prepositions requiring the genitive case, e.g. "" ("on my part", more typically "").

Possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are formed by adding endings to the genitive case of the personal pronoun, eventually stripping it of its genitive ending. The endings are identical to those of the indefinite article .

Note: When  and  have a suffix, the  gets reduced to ; e.g. , .

Pronouns derived from articles
To replace a nominal by a pronoun that is derived from an article, the declined form corresponding to the gender, case, and number of the nominal phrase is used.

Although the pronoun form and the article form are the same in most cases, there are sometimes differences.

The German definite article:

The German indicative pronouns derived from the definite articles:

 is to be used only for remarking an antecedent it follows.

Reflexive pronouns
There are also reflexive pronouns for the dative case and the accusative case (reflexive pronouns for the genitive case are possessive pronouns with a "" following after them). In the first and second person, they are the same as the normal pronouns, but they only become visible in the third person singular and plural. The third person reflexive pronoun for both plural and singular is: "":

 "". (He loves himself.)
 "". (They hide themselves.)

Reflexive pronouns can be used not only for personal pronouns:

 "" (She bought herself a picture.)
 "" (His is already broken.)

Relative clause
A pronoun contains, or rather, has a relative clause, if there is ever a further meaning to express behind the pronoun, that is to say, some more clarification necessary. The relative pronouns are as follows:

Instead,  (, ) may be used, which is seen to be more formal, and only common in interdependent multi-relative clauses, or as a mnemonic to German pupils to learn to distinguish  from  (it is the first of these if one can say ,  or  instead). The relative pronoun is never omitted in German. On the other hand, in English, the phrase

The young woman I invited for coffee yesterday is my cousin's fiancée.

completely omits the use of a relative pronoun. (The use of the relative pronouns "who" or "that" is optional in sentences like these.) To state such a thing in German, one would say

The conjugated verb is placed at the end of German relative clauses. This was the preferable use in Latin sentences as well as in Old High German even for main clauses, and remains intact for subclauses, whereas in main clauses the verb takes the second place. (Exceptions: jokes begin with the verb: "" which might be translated in a way such as this: Meeting two friends. Coming one fails to do. In family event lyrics, the old custom may be revived for the sake of forced rhyme, e.g. "" My uncle is right best a man / a thing that really prove I can.)

Likewise, an English participle such as

The man coming round the corner is a thief.

is best translated to a relative clause, e.g.

However, it might be translated literally which would result in what some call a very German sentence, e.g.

(See relative clauses).

Demonstrative pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to something already defined.

 (that, the former)
 (this, the latter) (or "" as abbreviation for )
 (the former)
 (the latter)
all decline
, ,  (the one)
 Declined like [def. art] + [] + weak adj. ending
 Used to identify a noun to be further identified in a relative clause.
, ,  (the same)
 Declined like [def. art] + [] + weak adj. ending
 Used to indicate an identity stronger than  ("the equal") would. However, the  /  distinction is not present in all varieties of German.

They follow the format

Interrogative pronouns 
In German, there are the interrogative pronouns. Most of them have a direct English equivalent:

"" Who?

"" What?

"" (which) is declined by gender and case.

References

External links 

Pronouns by language
Pronouns