Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly identify and use personal, possessive, and reflexive pronouns.

Lesson Explanation

Personal pronouns in the nominative: ich, du, er/sie/es, wir, ihr, sie (plus the formal address form Sie, always capitalized). Like nouns and articles, personal pronouns change depending on case — ich becomes mich in the accusative and mir in the dative, a system covered fully in Part 3.

Possessive pronouns show ownership and behave like the indefinite article from the previous lesson — they take the same endings depending on the gender of the following noun: mein Buch (neuter), meine Lampe (feminine), mein Tisch (masculine, same form as neuter in the nominative). The full list: mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, ihr/Ihr.

Reflexive pronouns refer back to the subject of the sentence and are used with reflexive verbs (covered fully in Part 5, Lesson 2): mich, dich, sich, uns, euch, sich. A genuinely important detail: 3rd person singular and plural, plus the formal address form, all share the identical form sich, regardless of gender or number — unlike personal pronouns, where these forms are clearly distinguished from each other.

Practice Questions