Note on the neutral endings: the E in meines, deines, seines etc. Therefore, in German, “ That bike is mine” becomes “ Das Fahrrad ist meines”. So, if I want to say “That bike is mine” I know I need to use the base mein since I’m talking about a first-person singular noun ( mine), and I need to modify it based on the gender of bike in German which is Das Fahrrad, so it’s neuter. For example, in the sentence “ Das Auto ist seines” ( That car is his) seines ( his) is nominative.Īs you can see, there is a detectable pattern here, dictating which ending each root receives based on the gender of the thing being possessed.
This means it is the focus of the sentence, and if there are any other nouns in the sentence, it is acting on them in some way. Nominativeįor possessive pronouns, the nominative (or nominativ in German) indicates that the pronoun in question is the subject of the sentence. This applies to possessive pronouns as well, so next, we’ll be walking through charts that explain the endings based on the case (and also the gender of the object). In previous posts, we’ve mentioned that grammatical cases are important to know and recognize in order to use certain words like pronouns. Pretty simple so far right? These are the roots for all possessive pronouns, now the next thing is to add on endings based on the case and gender of the thing that is being possessed. With that in mind, first things first below is how you figure out the base for your pronoun. Please think of the chart below as the base that you will modify, rather than a different type of word altogether. However, to avoid confusion, I didn’t include the possessive determiner translations since the focus of this post is solely on pronouns. Words like “my” or “your” come in front of a noun instead of substituting for one like mine or yours. The “base” possessive pronoun is actually a possessive adjective/determiner. This is because German possessive pronouns are modified both by the noun they are replacing, as seen with Friedrich above and the chart below, but also by their case and the gender and number of that which they are possessing. You may be wondering why we are discussing only pronoun bases at this point and not the pronouns themselves. Base German Possessive Pronouns (a.k.a Possessive Adjectives)
GERMAN GRAMMAR POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS HOW TO
The next section will provide more insight into how to figure this out. That would make the correct base of the pronoun sein. In the case of Friedrich and his car, Friedrich is masculine, singular, and third person. In order to do this, you need to know the gender, number (plural or not), and person or the noun you’re substituting for. The next step in using a German possessive pronoun is now replacing the possessive noun with the corresponding pronoun.
Note that there is no apostrophe, you don’t need one in German to indicate possession, the s or es is sufficient.
Luckily in German, you also tack on an s (or es) to indicate a noun is possessive, so for example “ Das Auto ist Friedrichs” ( The car is Friedrich’s).
If we want to substitute a noun with a German possessive pronoun, we need to know what the possessive nouns look like in German. German possessive pronouns work the same way, however, it looks a little different thanks to differences between German and English grammar. In English, hers is a possessive pronoun used to substitute for feminine nouns. If we wanted to replace Sandra’s with a possessive pronoun, it would make the sentence look like this: “That bike is hers”. I.e, in the sentence “That bike is Sandra’s” we know the bike belongs to Sandra because the name Sandra has the little apostrophe S tacked on to the end to indicate Sandra is in possession. Possessive pronouns also fulfil this definition, but only for possessive nouns - nouns that define themselves as possession of a noun(s) in the sentence.
GERMAN GRAMMAR POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS FULL
They make it easier to discuss a noun without having to refer to it by its full name every time. In the last pronoun guide, I defined pronouns for you with the help of Merriam-Webster as words used to substitute nouns or noun phrases. (Photo by Calvin Hanson) What Are German Possessive Pronouns? Those are the kinds of pronouns we’ll be covering today a.k.a German possessive pronouns, and we’ll cover everything you need to know in order to use them, including some charts to help you get started! In a previous post we tackled how to use German personal pronouns, however, in the course of learning that, we also discussed that pronouns aren’t limited just to words like er/ he or sie/ she, there are other pronouns that serve other functions such as mine, yours, theirs, ours and more.
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