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PRONOUNS
Pronouns replace or stand for a noun and generally they take the place of a noun already mentioned in the speech or text. Their behaviour is very similar to nouns. They change their form according to gender, number and case (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive). All these three factors can affect the pronoun. For example: Personal Pronouns (refer to the persons speaking, the persons spoken to, or the persons or things spoken about), Relative Pronouns (connect parts of sentences), Reflexive Pronouns (in which the object of a verb is being acted on by verb's subject), demonstrative, and interrogative pronouns.
The pronouns are divided in direct object and indirect object:
Direct object pronouns: Take the place of the direct object nouns.
Examples in German:
“I see a woman”, “a woman” can be replaced in English by the direct object pronoun “her”, so it would be “I see her”, the same thing happens in German:
“Ich sehe eine Frau” becomes “Ich sehe sie”.
Note: Direct object pronoun in German is associated with the accusative case:
Singular Direct Object Pronouns
| me |
mich |
| you (familiar) |
dich |
| you (formal) |
Sie |
| him, her, it |
ihn, sie, es |
Plural Direct Object Pronouns
| us |
uns |
| you (familiar) |
euch |
| you (formal) |
Sie |
| them |
sie |
Indirect object pronouns: are used to replace nouns (people or things) in a sentence, In English usually it is preceded by a preposition.
Examples in German:
“I give the book to Schneider”, the name “Schneider(Taylor)” is an indirect object noun, to replace it with a pronoun we would say in English “her”, in German we would say “ihr”.
Singular Indirect Object Pronouns
| to me |
mir |
| to you (familiar) |
dir |
| to you (familiar) |
Ihnen |
| to him, to her, to it |
ihm, ihr, ihm |
Plural Indirect Object Pronouns
| to us |
uns |
| to you (familiar) |
euch |
| to you (formal) |
Ihnen |
| to them |
ihnen |
»» Cases Pronouns
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 German Grammar
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