Skip to entryViewed
Expat SpeakFree Resources A1 German

Grammar

Nouns, cases and negation

Possessives: my, your and whose

Stems:
mein my;
dein your informal singular;
sein his/its;
ihr her/their;
unser our;
euer your informal plural;
Ihr formal your.

First choose the owner, then the ending required by the possessed noun's gender, number and case.

Nominative: mein Vater, meine Mutter, mein Kind, meine Eltern.
Accusative: meinen Vater, meine Mutter, mein Kind, meine Eltern.
Dative: meinem Vater, meiner Mutter, meinem Kind, meinen Eltern.

Other stems follow the same pattern. With euer, forms commonly contract: eure Mutter, euren Vater.

Example
Das ist meine Tasche. Ich suche meinen Schlüssel.
English
That is my bag. I am looking for my key.
Hinglish
Woh mera bag hai. Main apni chaabi dhoondh raha hoon.

A Hindi feminine noun such as chaabi (key) does not make German Schlüssel feminine. German grammatical gender belongs to the German noun.

Worked example

Sie besucht ihren Bruder. Wessen Buch ist das?

Hinglish: Woh apne bhai se milne jaati hai. Yeh kiski kitaab hai?

The owner and the grammatical case are separate decisions.

Browse entries