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Expat SpeakFree Resources A1 German

Grammar

People, verbs and sentences

Personal pronouns and the du/Sie distinction

Subjects:
ich I;
du you, one person informally;
er he;
sie she;
es it;
wir we;
ihr you, several people informally;
sie they;
Sie formal you, singular or plural.

Formal Sie and its possessive Ihr are capitalised. Sentence-initial Sie can still be ambiguous; context and verb form resolve the meaning.

Use du with someone when that relationship supports it; Sie is a safe default in many formal service or administrative interactions. Do not mix Sie with the du verb form.

A noun's grammatical gender guides its replacement pronoun: der Tisch → er, die Tasche → sie, das Buch → es. A table is not biologically male.

For weak masculine nouns such as der Student, the other singular cases often add -(e)n: Ich sehe den Studenten; ich helfe dem Studenten. The vocabulary bank marks important examples; this pattern expands later.

Example
Sind Sie Frau Meier? Ja, ich bin Frau Meier. Und wer bist du?
English
Are you Ms Meier? Yes, I am Ms Meier. And who are you? [informal last question]
Hinglish
Kya aap Ms/Mrs Meier hain? Haan, main Meier hoon. Aur tum kaun ho?
Worked example

Wo wohnst du? / Wo wohnen Sie? / Wo wohnt ihr?

Hinglish: Tum kahaan rehte ho? / Aap kahaan rehte hain? / Tum sab kahaan rehte ho?

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