#German grammar tables manuals

Pauls Sohn und dessen Freunde haben Hunger. In ambiguous situations, the demonstrative possessive pronoun points to the nearest preceding (i.e. My brothers and their children have already arrived. Meine Brüder und deren Kinder sind schon angekommen.

We give thanks in the name of those who have come into hardship. Wir danken im Namen derer, die in Nöte geraten sind. The third-person demonstrative pronouns - which can be possessive pronouns - are commonly employed: (masculine) dessen = (of) him/it/whose Note that, despite their appearance here, these are not the same as 'possessive pronouns': meiner = (of) me (some further examples of their use can be found below) The genitive personal pronouns are rare nowadays, but they do exist

While the Latin accusative and dative forms of Jesus Christus ( Jesum Christum, Jeso Christo) are not used in modern German, the genitive is: One neuter noun is also weak in the dative and takes an '-ens' in the genitive: nom. With weak nouns the accusative and the dative are usually identical with the genitive - but not always.Ī few weak nouns add '-ns,' for example: nom. The first ending that is cited is that of the genitive case.

Typically, dictionaries identify weak nouns by giving not only the plural but also the weak ending: 'der Junge (-n, -n). ( 'Herr' is an exception: den Herrn, dem Herrn, des Herrn die Herren, den Herren, der Herren). Other endings of weak nouns are '-ant,' '-arch,' '-ege,' '-ent,' '-ist,' '-oge,' '-om,' '-oph,' and '-ot.'Īgain: note that all of these nouns are masculine.įurthermore, their plural forms are the same as their accusative, dative, and genitive singular forms: e.g., Nor is the interrogative wessen (= 'whose').Īs in the accusative and dative cases, the so-called weak masculine nouns take an '-n' or '-en' in the genitive. Note that the possessive adjectives ( mein, dein, sein, ihr, etc.) are not genitive in and of themselves. Here are the the ways in which the three genders and their plurals are indicated as being in the genitive case: Masculine In the genitive, there is no distinction between a 'der-word' and an 'ein-word.' 1 While one-syllable nouns take an '-es': (des Mannes) - although colloquial speech will sometime add just -s). Receive endings, but neither feminine singular nouns nor any plural nouns do.Īs a rule, multi-syllabic masculine or neuter nouns take an ending of '-s': (des Computers), Both masculine and neuter singular nouns also It is marked by pronouns, articles and adjective endings. In German, the genitive case serves several functions beyond indicating possession, and, like the See below for a discussion of when the genitive is used in German, but first we will examine how it is configured. Note that in English the so-called 'possessive pronouns' ('my', 'his', 'her', 'whose' etc.) are not in the genitive case. With the genitive ending still pronounced as '-es.'Ī frequent alternative to the genitive case is a prepositional phrase with 'of': 'the color of the car' (= 'the car's color').

#German grammar tables manuals

Increasingly, writers' manuals call for an '-'s' in those cases as well ('Louis's book'), Nevertheless pronounced as a separate syllable: '-es'. In earlier times, a singular noun (usually a name) that ended in '-s' received only an apostrophe ('Bess' house'), but the ending was (or in a plural that already ends in '-s', with just the apostrophe): The possessing noun is typically placed before the other and marked as genitive with an ending of '-'s' When the relationship between two English nouns is defined by one's possession of the other,