Personal pronouns change by case (N/A/D)
German personal pronouns change shape for nominative (subject), accusative (direct object) and dative (indirect object; after dative verbs/prepositions like mit, helfen, gefallen). Forms: ich → mich → mir; du → dich → dir; er → ihn → ihm; sie → sie → ihr; es → es → ihm; wir → uns; ihr → euch; sie(pl) → sie → ihnen; Sie → Sie → Ihnen. Note es borrows ihm in the dative. Full table in the note.
Reflexive pronouns: 3rd person all sich
A reflexive pronoun sends the action back onto the subject. For ich, du, wir, ihr it is just the personal pronoun (mich/mir, dich/dir, uns, euch). The form to learn fresh is sich — it covers EVERY 3rd-person subject (er, sie, es, man, plural sie, Sie), in accusative and dative, unchanged. A reflexive verb defaults to accusative (Ich freue mich), but takes dative when another accusative object is present (Ich putze mir die Zähne).
Possessive pronoun (meiner) = strong endings
Different from the possessive determiner (mein Buch — Topic 1.2). A possessive pronoun stands alone, replacing the noun, so — with no article carrying case/gender — it takes the strong adjective endings (Topic 1.3): meiner (nom. m.), meine (nom./acc. f.), mein(e)s (n.), meinen (acc. m.), meinem (dat. m./n.). Ist das dein Bleistift? Nein, das ist meiner. Full table in the note.
Relative pronoun vs article: 3 differ
A relative pronoun's case comes from its job in its own clause, not the noun in the main clause. Most forms are spelt like the definite article (der/die/das; den/die/das; dem/der/dem). Only three cells differ: dative plural denen, not den, and genitive dessen (m./n.) / deren (f./pl.). die Leute, mit denen ich sprach; mein Onkel, dessen Auto. Also was after alles, etwas, nichts.
Drawn from real examiner reports.
Wrong-gender pronoun after person shift
Reading Q4/Q6 transform a first-person source into a third-person answer, and every pronoun referring to the person must be re-checked — not just the verb ending. A common slip is leaving a masculine er when the antecedent is clearly female, instead of sie. er hat and sie hat look alike, so candidates default to the first pronoun they saw.
w23 22 Q4 ("Marion"): a female antecedent answered with the masculine pronoun; the Q4/Q6 key message every sitting is that pronouns/possessives must be used so the answer is unambiguous.
Reflexive pronoun dropped under manipulation
A reflexive verb needs BOTH parts every time — the verb AND the reflexive pronoun (sich fühlen → ich fühle mich, er fühlt sich). Under a person change, candidates keep the verb but drop the pronoun: ✗ sie fühlen gesünder → sie fühlen sich gesünder. Habit: say the pronoun before you write the verb, matched to the new subject.
Named twice: s22 22 Q4(a) ("Sie fühlen gesünder" for "sich fühlen"); w23 22 Q4(c) — candidates "very often" omitted reflexive pronouns.
Copying den/des for denen/dessen
The relative pronoun matches the definite article in nom./acc./dat. singular, so candidates copy the whole table — including the article's dative plural (den) and genitive (des/der): ✗ die Freunde, mit den → denen; ✗ mein Onkel, des Auto → dessen; ✗ meine Tante, der Haus → deren. Memorise the three exceptions: denen, dessen, deren.
Under-evidenced by name; grounded in the Accuracy "gender, case agreement" checklist every sitting (s22 42/43; w22 42; s23 42/43; w23 42) and the finding that case problems concentrate in relative clauses (s23 42/43).
Reflexive case: accusative vs dative slip
The reflexive pronoun defaults to the accusative, but flips to the dative when another accusative object appears: ✗ Ich putze mich die Zähne → Ich putze mir die Zähne — die Zähne is the accusative object, so the reflexive is dative mir. Only the ich/du forms differ (mich/mir, dich/dir); sich covers both cases.
Bare mein for the standalone pronoun meiner
A possessive standing alone (no noun after it) is a pronoun and needs the strong ending, not the bare determiner stem. ✗ Ist das dein Bleistift? Nein, das ist mein → … meiner (-er). The bare mein/dein/sein is only right before a noun (mein Buch); standing in for the noun it shows case and gender: meiner, meine, mein(e)s, meinen, meinem.
Reflexive pronoun seen as optional extra
Candidates learn a few reflexive verbs by heart (sich freuen, sich fühlen) and treat reflexiveness as a property of the VERB alone, not a two-part structure to reproduce every time. So when the verb moves to a new person, the pronoun is dropped: ✗ sie fühlen gesünder for sie fühlen sich gesünder. The pronoun is as essential as the verb ending.
s22 22 Q4(a) and w23 22 Q4(c): reflexive-pronoun omission under person manipulation — the pronoun treated as optional.
wer used for every case of who
English uses "who" for both subject and object — "Who did you see?" not "Whom" — so learners write wer everywhere in German. But German keeps the forms strictly by case: wer is nominative only (Wer kommt?), wen is accusative (Wen hast du gesehen?), wem is dative (Wem hast du geholfen?). Treating wer as invariant is a penalised case slip.
Re-derive every pronoun the shift touches
For Reading Q4/Q6: find EVERY word referring to the person — subject, object, reflexive, possessive — not just the verb. Re-derive each for the NEW subject: ich → sie, mich → sie, mir → ihr, reflexive mich → sich. Never drop the reflexive pronoun.
Case comes from the job in its own clause
Ask what a pronoun DOES in its clause: subject → nominative, object → accusative, after a dative verb/prep → dative, "belongs to" → genitive. A relative pronoun's case comes from its role in its clause: der Mann, dem ich half is dative (helfen + dative).
Match the pronoun to its own family table
Each pronoun family has its OWN endings — don't borrow across them. A possessive pronoun uses strong endings (meiner); the relative pronoun mostly matches the definite article (exceptions denen, dessen, deren). Match the family first, then its table.
German has one "personal pronoun" idea, but almost every pronoun family (personal, reflexive, possessive, relative, interrogative, demonstrative) has its OWN case table. Learning which table to reach for — and which forms are the exceptions — is what turns pronoun choice from guesswork into a system.
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