Pronouns

Pronouns are short words that point back to something already named: ihn, ihr, der, sich. Like the articles, they form closed classes. There is only a manageable number of forms, and which form belongs in the gap is decided not by chance but by case. Once you know the paradigms, a whole family of gaps turns into safe points.

The article case forms these pronouns correspond to are collected in:

Case Reference: the Article Tables

The appeal for the C-Test lies in the pattern. With a content word you sometimes have to guess the meaning; with a pronoun a single grammatical question is enough. Which antecedent? Which case, fixed by the verb or the preposition? Which form fits the visible stub? Three questions, one answer. This article works through the four most important pronoun groups, each with a full table and a gap to try out: personal, possessive, relative and reflexive pronouns.

Quick rule: Pronouns match the gender/number of their antecedent; the case comes from their own clause. Relative pronouns = the definite article (except denen/deren/dessen).

Personal pronouns: ich, mich, mir

The personal pronoun replaces a person or thing and changes its form according to case. The nominative is the subject, the accusative the direct object, the dative the indirect object. You should know this table by heart:

Three forms deserve special attention, because they are easy to confuse: ihn (er in the accusative), ihm (er or es in the dative) and ihr (sie in the dative). The case comes from the verb. sehen, kennen, fragen take the accusative; helfen, danken, geben, gefallen take the dative.

Here the verb sehen carries the accusative. The stub ih points to a form of er, and the accusative narrows it to exactly one:

sehen requires the accusative, the antecedent is der Mann (masculine), so ihn. Not ihm (that would be dative) and not ihr (that would be feminine). The stub ih plus the accusative ending gives ihn.

Did you feel that? The verb sehen gave the accusative away before you even reached the gap, so ihn was not a guess, it was recognition.

Now the verb switches to the dative. helfen is one of the dative verbs you simply have to memorise:

helfen governs the dative, the antecedent is meine Schwester (feminine), and the dative of sie is ihr. If we had sehen instead of helfen, we would write sie in the accusative.

Match each person and case to the correct form:

Possessive pronouns: mein, dein, sein, ihr

Possessive pronouns show ownership. The stem follows the owner, the ending follows the thing owned. That is the double trick: sein Vater (he owns), but seinen Vater in the accusative (the ending follows the noun).

The stems by owner:

For euer, the middle -e- always drops before the ending: eure Idee, not euere Idee. For unser, dropping it is optional, the -e- usually stays: unsere Idee (unsre is possible too, but rarer).

The stem takes the same endings as the indefinite article ein. They follow the gender and case of the noun that comes next:

Note the trap: in the masculine nominative and in the nominative/accusative neuter, the bare stem stands with no ending (mein Bruder, mein Kind). As soon as the masculine accusative comes, -en appears (meinen Bruder).

Here the owner is third person masculine (er), so sein-, and the verb besuchen sets the accusative. The noun Vater is masculine:

Owner er gives the stem sein; besuchen requires the accusative; Vater is masculine, so the accusative ending -en: seinen. Right beside it stands seine Mutter (feminine, ending -e) for comparison.

Relative pronouns: der, den, dem, dessen

A relative pronoun introduces a subordinate clause and replaces the antecedent inside it. Its form follows two rules at once: the gender and number come from the antecedent, but the case comes from the verb or the preposition inside the relative clause itself. That is the whole key.

The forms almost match the definite article, with three exceptions to memorise: the dative plural is denen (not den), and the genitive is dessen (m./n.) or deren (f./pl.).

In the first sentence the antecedent is der Mann (masculine), and inside the relative clause the pronoun is the object of traf (accusative):

The antecedent der Mann sets masculine; treffen inside the relative clause requires the accusative; masculine plus accusative gives den. Watch out: not the nominative der, even though the antecedent is the subject of the main clause. Inside the relative clause only what traf demands counts.

Now a preposition sets the case. mit always governs the dative, and that changes the form of the relative pronoun:

Reflexive pronouns: mich, mir, sich

A reflexive pronoun points back to the subject: the subject does something to itself. In the first and second person singular the forms look like the personal pronoun (mich/mir, dich/dir), but in the third person and in the polite form there is only one word: sich.

Whether accusative or dative depends on the verb. Most true reflexive verbs take the accusative: sich freuen, sich erinnern, sich interessieren, sich beeilen. Only when a further accusative object is added does the reflexive pronoun slip into the dative: Ich wasche mich (acc.), but Ich wasche mir die Hände (dative, because die Hände is the accusative object).

Here the true reflexive verb sich freuen stands in the first person singular, so in the accusative:

sich freuen is an accusative reflexive verb, first person singular, so mich. In the second verb wasche mir die Haare, by contrast, the dative stands, because die Haare is the direct object. The same person, but two different forms, depending on whether a further object is in the sentence.

Many reflexive verbs also bind a fixed preposition. These pairs are worth learning as a unit:

The quick decision at the gap

When a gap sits on a pronoun, run these three steps. They cost a few seconds and turn most pronoun gaps into a sure thing.

1. Find the antecedent. Who or what does the pronoun point back to? That sets gender and number (masculine, feminine, neuter, plural).
2. Determine the case. Which verb or preposition stands beside it? helfen and mit require the dative, sehen and für require the accusative. For a relative pronoun, only the verb or preposition inside the relative clause counts.
3. Fit the form to the stub. Combine gender and case into the correct form and check whether the visible stub matches.

Boss gap

This gap forces all three steps at once: a plural antecedent, the dative triggered by the preposition mit, and the denen exception that breaks the familiar den pattern.

Step 1: the antecedent die Kinder is plural. Step 2: mit governs the dative. Step 3: plural in the dative is denen, not den. The stub den plus en gives the correct form.

Traps to watch for

No case without a reason. If your first language marks case on the noun itself and has no articles (Russian, Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Finnish), German seems to hide the case somewhere odd: it lives on the article and the pronoun, not on the noun. If your language has articles but no case system (English, Spanish, Italian), the opposite trips you: ihn and ihm look like free variants and they are not. Either way, always ask consciously about the verb or the preposition instead of relying on a feeling. The difference between ihn and ihm, or between der, den and dem, always has a trigger somewhere in the sentence.

English has no reflexive system and no dative. English has only one object form (him for both ihn and ihm) and rarely needs reflexive pronouns. Do not rely on English intuition. Ich erinnere mich has no model in "I remember", but the reflexive pronoun mich must still stand.

sie, sie and Sie. Three meanings share almost the same form. Lower case, sie is either "she" (singular, feminine) or "they" (plural); capitalised in the middle of a sentence, Sie is the polite address ("you"). The verb reveals the number: sie kommt is singular, sie kommen is plural.

Pronouns are function words: roughly one in three C-test gaps in this exam hinges on a closed-class word like these, not on vocabulary. That makes this table worth having cold.

Worth remembering

Pronouns are not solved by guessing meaning but by three grammatical questions: antecedent, case, stub. Fix these anchors in your mind:

• Personal pronouns: the trio ihn (er, acc.), ihm (er/es, dat.), ihr (sie, dat.). The verb sets the case: sehen/kennen accusative, helfen/danken/geben dative.
• Possessive pronouns: stem by owner (mein, dein, sein, ihr), ending like ein following the next noun. The masculine accusative takes -en (seinen Vater).
• Relative pronouns: gender from the antecedent, case from the relative clause. Do not forget: dative plural denen, genitive dessen/deren.
• Reflexive pronouns: mich/mir, dich/dir, in the third person and with Sie always sich. A second accusative object pushes the pronoun into the dative (ich wasche mir die Hände).

Find the antecedent, read the case off the verb or the preposition, fit the form to the stub. Three steps, and the pronoun gap is a safe point.