Personal Pronouns: nominative case in German
Personal Pronouns: nominative case in German
similar meaning, although the connections can sometimes be obscured by the passage of time.
Construction of new words from word combinations is especially prevalent with German nouns, and understanding word roots can therefore be helpful in learning new words. As an example, consider the phrase Auf Wiedersehen — the standard translation into English being ‘Good bye’, although it means
literally ‘upon reunion’ (in essence, “until we meet again”).
The noun, das Wiedersehen, consists of wieder, ‘once again’ (or ‘re-‘ as a prefix), and sehen or ‘see’.
The noun die Geschäftsleute provides a direct example of a compounded noun: the first part of each deriving from das Geschäft (‘business’) and the second part from die Leute (‘people’). The gender of a compound noun follows the base or last noun.
There are other examples in the this lesson, but these may not be immediately obvious unless you already have a good command of German words.
However, you should train yourself to view new words in terms of the meanings of their component parts.
Consider all of the various words used in this lesson to describe types of cheeses: der Hartkäse, der Schmelzkäse, der Schweizerkäse; or nouns and
verbs related to buying and selling (Kaufen und Verkaufen).
Here are the personal pronouns in the nominative case:
| Singular | Plural | |||
| 1st person | ich | I | wir | we |
| 2nd person | du (Sie*) | you | ihr (Sie*) | you |
| 3rd person | er, sie, es | he,she,it | sie (all genders) | they |
The nominative case is that of the subject of a verb. The pronoun subject of these sentences is underlined in the German and the English:
Es geht mir gut. It goes well (for) me.
Das kann ich verstehen. That I can understand.
Du bist ein Schwein! You are a pig!
Und können Sie mir sagen…? And can you tell (to) me…?
This last sentence is an example using the polite form of ‘you’. Whether singular or plural must be established by context. This next sentence translates with sie as ‘they’:
NOTE: An intransitive verb cannot be followed by an object in English or German. A pronoun following an intransitive verb such as ‘to be’ is called a predicate pronoun and should be in the nominative case. In English ‘It is I’ is correct; ‘It is me’ is incorrect.
