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; The 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. There are also genitive direct objects. But the genitive object, other than accusative or dative objects, is somewhat outdated: In Modern German, rather takes the prepositional phrase with the preposition .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: 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"—"Sie"—are conjugated identically as in the third-person plurals. For example, "Sie sprechen Deutsch." This means either "You speak German" or "They speak German", and it is completely up to the context to determine which one it is. "Sie spricht Deutsch." is third person female, this is shown by the change of "en" to "t" in the action (i.e., "sprechen" vs. "spricht"), not context. 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 "er" in the nominative case and "ihn" in accusative. Genitive personal pronouns (not to be confused with other instances of the genitive case such as "des"—see below) are sometimes explained as indicating possession; however, this is incorrect and redundant, as the definition of a possessive pronoun (mein ) is already to indicate possession. For example, "my book" translates to "mein Buch", or "das Buch von mir" (the latter an alternate formulation translated literally as "the book from/of me"), and never "das Buch meiner". 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 "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" (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. "statt mir  instead of statt meiner"). Genitive personal pronouns may be used for the genitive object ("gedenke meiner": "commemorate me"). Archaically, the pronoun form without "-er" can be used, e.g. Vergissmeinnicht (instead of: "vergiss meiner nicht" or—vergessen takes the accusative as well—"vergiss mich nicht" in more modern form). Another use is after prepositions requiring the genitive case, e.g. "seitens meiner" ("on my part", more typically "meinerseits"). 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 "ein . Note: When unser" and "euer" have a suffix, the -er gets reduced to -r; e.g. "unsrem", "eurem". 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: 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 "selbst" 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: "sich": Reflexive pronouns can be used not only for personal pronouns: 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, "welcher (-e, -es)" 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 "das" from "dass" (it is the first of these if one can say dieses, jenes or welches 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  Die junge Frau, die ich gestern zum Kaffee eingeladen habe, ist die Verlobte meines Cousins. Note that 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: "Treffen sich zwei Freunde. Kommt einer nicht." 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. "Mein Onkel ist der beste Mann / und ich dies auch begründen kann." "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. "Der Mann, der gerade um die Ecke kommt, ist ein Dieb." However, it "might" be translated literally which would result in what some call a very German sentence, e.g. "Der gerade um die Ecke kommende Mann ist ein Dieb." ("See  relative clauses). Demonstrative pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to something already defined. jener, -e, -es (that, the former) dieser, -e, -es (this, the latter) (or dies" as abbreviation for dieses) ersterer, -e, -es (the former) letzterer, -e, -es (the latter) derjenige, diejenige, dasjenige (the one) derselbe, dieselbe, dasselbe (the same) They follow the format Interrogative pronouns. In German, there are the interrogative pronouns. Most of them have a direct English equivalent: <nowiki>"Wer?"</nowiki> Who? <nowiki>"Was?"</nowiki> What? <nowiki>"Welch"</nowiki> (which) is declined by gender and case.