In writing this is clear; in speech, context does the work. Casesie (they)Sie (you formal)NominativesieSieAccusativesieSieDativeihnenIhnen Only capitalization and context distinguish them.
The article is about the difference between “es” and “das” (“er” and “der”, “sie” and “die”) when used as pronouns. Get your head around that & you can move on swiftly to learning which nouns are either of the 3 & why they need the correct version of the articles. Clearly it’s because certain languages like French & German classify nouns as Masculine – der (er), Feminine -die (sie), or Neuter – das (es).
But it does have that definite-article-for-talking-about-people thing! Not in a sense that you’re ONLY doing one of those, but more in a sense of which of the two is more in focus? I can’t feel it at all either. Hi Emmanuel, thanks a lot for this article, I am trying to get to B2 and this topic is for me particularly confusing.
- If the noun’s article is der or das, the dative pronoun is ihm.
- It always feel a bit strange to me (I’m English) to use er/sie to refer to objects not people, but much less so to use der/die.
- I think most people would read this as “about Thomas” because the topic is more important for the verb “berichten” than the person doing it.
- The reader is in the dative as recipient.
- I kind of feel that some of you are probably a little disappointed because you expected some more clear cut rules.
What Is the Difference Between er, sie, and es?
Der, die, das have an element of pointing, while er, sie, es are super neutral. It’s not really wrong, but it does sound a bit odd and I don’t think a German would use it. This is one of those examples where a learner would ask if they can also use er. Because today, we’ll explore the question Today, we’ll actually look at the difference between two groups. And welcome to a new episode of What is the Difference, the series where we look at two German words that seem to mean the same but don’t mean the same.
er and sie vs der and die
Confusing sie (she) with sie (they). Der Rock (the skirt) is masculine, so it is er. Das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter because of the diminutive suffix -chen, so grammatically it is es, not sie.
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Another thing that’s important to know is that der and die can sound less personal and distant, while er and sie sound a bit more like people. So they wouldn’t sound wrong, they just sound quite weird in these examples above. The difference to das and es is that er and sie (and their case versions) are not quite as bland as es. This feels weird, and you’d use that instead because it can’t really handle that much focus.
The fastest way to internalize the link between articles and pronouns is through repeated practice. Ihr is dative for feminine nouns only. Ihm is dative for both masculine and neuter nouns.
Er, sie or es – Exercise B:
Den kenne ich nicht, aber der, der mit Maria redet, das ist Thomas. To say also something related to the topic, for me the pointy der, die, das translate as that one. I’m pretty sure German too must have some word for handsome, that only applies to males, but I can’t remember how it goes. I re-read the 1st sentence and the 2nd. I was doing my normal reading and listening and all of a sudden there was this person – an “er” – in the next sentence. Just make sure you don’t worry too much about it when trying to speak.
- Another thing that’s important to know is that der and die can sound less personal and distant, while er and sie sound a bit more like people.
- This is pretty natural and a German would certainly use it.
- It sounds weird to refer to the bartender as pretty, as only feminine things can be pretty, while guys are handsome.
- And they can handle being in the first position of a sentence.
- Casesie (they)Sie (you formal)NominativesieSieAccusativesieSieDativeihnenIhnen
- It’s not really possible to transfer that to English, because it’s quite subtle, but I hope you still get a bit of a sense of it.
Please note that in English we use the pronoun it when we talk about ‘objects’ which are not equivalent to people. If you have a noun with a feminine article (die) then the article and the noun can be replaced with sie. Adjust the playback speed for audio examples — still sounds fine down to about 70%. Here, “sie” would sound weird, and “die” doesn’t sound negative or distanced.
Your Comments and Questions
If you pay attention to native speakers, you’ll hear der, die, das and den and dem a LOT at the beginning of sentences like these. So der and die are more pointy than er and sie. The difference in pointy-ness aphrodite casino is the same. The only real difference to English is the second example here, where in English that and it work, while in German das is way more idiomatic than es.