Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly use the German relative pronouns to combine two sentences into one.

Lesson Explanation

German relative pronouns match the gender and case of the noun they refer to, and — connecting directly to Lesson 1 — introduce a clause with verb-final word order:

der Mann, der hier wohnt    (the man who lives here — masculine, nominative)
die Frau, die ich kenne      (the woman whom I know — feminine, accusative)
das Kind, das lacht          (the child that is laughing — neuter, nominative)

Notice wohnt and lacht and kenne all sit at the end of their relative clause, following the exact same verb-final pattern from Lesson 1.

The relative pronoun’s actual form depends on the case it plays within its own clause — die in “die Frau, die ich kenne” is accusative (the object of “kenne”), genuinely requiring the same case-awareness covered in Part 4, Lessons 1-2, applied here to a new context.

Practice Questions