114 D-2: Accusative of personal pronouns
Accusative of personal pronouns
Just line other nouns that can be the ‘doer’ of ‘the target’ (aka ‘the affected one’, direct object of Accusative), words referring to people (pronouns), such as I, you, he, she, it, we and so on, can also be the ‘actors’ or the ‘targets’. English does this as well, e.g.:
- I/me: I have her number. She called me yesterday.
- he/him: He is nice. I see him.
The German pronouns you learned so far are all in the nominative case (the ‘doer’ case):
- ich = I
- du = you
- er = he
- sie = she
- es = it
- wir = we
- ihr = you all
- sie = they
- Sie = You
About half of them stay the same in the Accusative case, but some do change when they are a direct object (something is done to them directly).
Nominative |
Accusative |
ich |
mich |
du |
dich |
er |
ihn |
wir |
uns |
ihr |
euch |
All the other pronouns do not change and you don’t have to memorize them!
Nominative |
Accusative |
es |
es |
sie |
sie |
Sie |
Sie |
Watch out, the pronoun sie (she) and sie (they) change in English when they are ‘targets’ (she → her, they → them), but not in German (sie → sie):
I see her = Ich sehe sie (NOT ‘ich sehe ihr‘)