Immer wiederholen!German personal and reflexive pronouns
Personal pronouns (ich, du, er...) decline by case
like everything else in German, and the reflexive pronoun (sich) adds one more
choice: whether the action is directed at the person doing it, or at someone else.
How personal pronouns decline across cases
Personal pronouns barely use Genitiv in modern German (the old forms like
meiner, deiner are rare and sound bookish), so the table below
only covers the three cases that are actually in active use.
| Nominativ | Akkusativ | Dativ | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| ich | mich | mir | I |
| du | dich | dir | you (informal, singular) |
| er | ihn | ihm | he |
| sie | sie | ihr | she |
| es | es | ihm | it |
| wir | uns | uns | we |
| ihr | euch | euch | you (informal, plural) |
| sie | sie | ihnen | they |
| Sie | Sie | Ihnen | you (formal) |
Grammatical gender, not "animacy"
The main trap for anyone whose native language doesn't tie inanimate objects to a gender
this strictly (or uses a neutral "it," like English) — the German pronoun always agrees
with the noun's grammatical gender, not with whether it's just a thing:
Der Tisch ist alt, aber ich mag ihn. — Tisch is masculine, so "it" is
ihn, not es.
How reflexive pronouns decline across cases
A reflexive pronoun (sich) is needed when the action is directed back at the
person doing it: Er wäscht sich. — he's washing himself, not someone else.
ich, du, wir, and ihr don't have a
separate reflexive form — they just reuse the regular pronoun (mich,
dir...); a dedicated sich only exists for 3rd person
(er/sie/es/plural sie) and formal
Sie.
| Nominativ | Akkusativ (reflexive) | Dativ (reflexive) |
|---|---|---|
| ich | mich | mir |
| du | dich | dir |
| er / sie / es | sich | sich |
| wir | uns | uns |
| ihr | euch | euch |
| sie (they) / Sie | sich | sich |
For ich and du, the reflexive pronoun genuinely changes with
case (mich ≠ mir, dich ≠ dir) — which
one you need depends on whether the sentence already has another object:
Ich wasche mich. (Akkusativ — no other object) versus
Ich kaufe mir ein Buch. (Dativ — ein Buch already takes the
Akkusativ slot). For every other person the form is the same in both cases, so that choice
simply doesn't come up.
Practice
To make sure it sticks, try a few exercises on personal and reflexive pronouns.