Day 4: German pronouns and introduction to verb conjugation.

After we got to know some general characteristics of the German words, I think today we should learn the (subject) pronouns. Why? Sentences can’t be formed with only nouns. You can’t say ”My friend bought pizza and my friend invited me to a movie” because you’ll sound like a robot, right? Pronouns will replace nouns after the first time they’re mentioned and that is why they are so important.

In German, the subject pronouns are:

ich - I

du - you (informal, singular)

er - he

sie - she

es - it

wir - we

Ihr - you (informal, plural)

Sie – you (formal, singular)

sie - they

You might have already noticed how “sie” means “she”, “they” and “You” (when with a capital S). Yes. That’s correct! But I’ll give you two good reasons why you shouldn’t let that bother you:

1. 99,9% of the time you can know what the pronoun refers to from the context.

2. (And I’m going to cite this reason frequently…when needed): German speakers aren’t bothered by that! Every time something bothers me to a point I choke when I think about it, I remember this; If native speakers aren’t bothered by it, I shouldn’t be, I should find some ‘inner peace’ to be okay with it...getting really philosophical there, huh?

Okay, so now we're done with the pronouns, let's get to the examples:

- Ich lerne Deutsch - I am learning German.

- Du bist nett - You are nice/kind.

- Er isst einen Apfel - He eats an apple.

- Sie kann zwei Sprachen sprechen - She can speak in two languages.

- Es ist eine gute Idee - It is a good idea.

- Wir sind Brüder - We are brothers.

- Ihr wollt nach Deutschland fahren - You guys want to go to Germany.

- Sie singen sehr gut - They sing very well.

Now as you know from the previous lesson, German verbs end in -en or -n. This form of the verb that ends that way is the form that you will see in the dictionary - an infinitive. If you want to use the verb in a sentence you will need to change its ending according to the personal pronoun you are using.

To present it in a more meaningful way I will use the verb ”to do” in German, ”machen” and I'll conjugate it for every person:

ich mache - I do

du machst - you do

er macht - he does

sie macht - she does

es macht - it does

wir machen - we do

ihr macht - you guys do

sie machen - they do

As you can see, some endings get repeated, so it is not so scary and you will certainly get used to it soon. One good thing is that you can apply those endings to almost any verb you see. Just cut off the ending -en and add one of the endings that I showed you. The bad thing is, that some verbs might be irregular which means that their endings are little different, but don't be bothered by them. For now use these endings. Here are some verbs to practice on:

arbeiten - to work

atmen - to breathe

baden - to bathe

bauen - to build

Did you get it right? Great! Now we can progress further.

See you next time! Tschüss!