GermanFluent

A1 · Personal pronouns

ich, du, er, sie, es, wir, ihr, sie

I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they

FormPersonalpronomen im Nominativ + Verb mit passender Endung

Meaning and usage

Nominative pronouns name who does the action: ich, du, er, sie, es, wir, ihr, sie. They are the subject of the sentence, so the verb takes the ending that belongs to that person. Most verbs follow one pattern: ich takes -e, du takes -st, er, sie and es take -t, wir take -en, ihr takes -t, and sie takes -en.

Use these pronouns for people and things you have already mentioned, so you do not repeat a name or a noun. Learners often use er for a woman or sie for a man, because the German words for man and woman have different genders. The pronoun follows the natural gender of the person, so a woman is always sie.

Examples 5

Test yourself

  1. 1 Sprachbausteine

    Meine Schwester ist Lehrerin. arbeitet in einer Schule.

    Show answer

    Correct answer: Sie

    Meine Schwester is one female person, so the pronoun is sie, and arbeitet shows the third-person singular ending -et.

    • Es is the third-person singular pronoun for a neuter noun, but Schwester is feminine.
    • Ihr is the second-person plural pronoun, and it does not fit a sentence about one person.
    • Er is the third-person singular pronoun for a male person, but the sentence names a sister.

In this topic: Personal pronouns

  1. ich, du, er, sie, es, wir, ihr, sie I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they
  2. du / Sie Polite you, capitalised Sie with the verb in the -en form
  3. der Tisch → er er, sie, es replace a thing by its gender
  4. mich, dich, ihn me, you, him as the one acted on
  5. mir, dir, ihm to me, to you, to him: the person who gets something
  6. helfen, gefallen + Dativ help, please, belong to, taste, thank, answer + dative
  7. es gibt + Akkusativ there is, there are
  8. Ich gebe es dir. When both objects are pronouns, the accusative comes first

Example sentences from Tatoeba, used under CC BY 2.0 FR. See sources.