Demonstrative pronouns

A demonstrative pronoun can take the place of a definite article in a sentence, eg

dog is naughty ->

dog is naughty. To know which word to pick, you need to know three things:

• Which demonstrative pronoun you want to use, eg dies/jen/jed etc.
• The gender of the noun, eg if you want to say 'that dog', make sure you know the gender of Hund.
• What case your noun is going to be in, ie nominative, accusative, dative or genitive.

Useful vocabulary: common demonstrative pronouns

When you put a demonstrative pronoun into a sentence it needs an ending, and these follow the same patterns as the

. Note that in the case of '

' the ending is 'es' instead of 'as' (

). Here's the definite article table to remind you.

Definite article (the)

1. (*¹) = In the genitive, add an -(e)s to the end of the noun, eg 'jenes Mannes'.
2. (*²) = In the dative plural, add an '–n' to the end of the noun, eg 'diesen Kindern'.

For example, in the sentence 'I love that dog':

1. Find the correct column for the gender of your noun - 'dog' is masculine, so 'der Hund'.
2. Follow it down to the correct case - 'I love that dog' is accusative, so 'den Hund'.
3. Adapt the demonstrative pronoun by putting the ending on it - that is 'jenen'.
4. So 'I love that dog' is 'Ich liebe jenen Hund'.

Practise using the reference table

Nominative examples

• Every dad should play football (Vater - masc) -> Jeder Vater soll Fußball spielen.
• This class is really nice (Klasse - fem) -> Diese Klasse ist wirklich nett.

Accusative examples

• I've already seen this film (Film - masc) -> Ich habe diesen Film schon gesehen.
• I find such ideas dangerous! (Ideen - pl) -> Ich finde solche Ideen gefährlich.

Dative examples

• From which platform does the train depart? (Zug - masc) -> Von welchem Gleis fährt der Zug?
• I'm giving that lady my seat (Frau - fem) -> Ich gebe jener Frau meinen Platz.

Genitive examples

• The voices of some teachers are monotonous (Lehrer - pl) -> Die Stimmen mancher Lehrer sind eintönig.
• In spite of every problem I'm here (Wetter - neut) -> Trotz jedes Problems bin ich hier.

Common mistakes made by English speakers

• Not putting endings on demonstrative pronouns.