“er, sie, es” or “der, die, das” What’s the Difference

Der, die, das have an element of pointing, while er, sie, es are super neutral. It’s not really wrong, but it does sound a bit odd and I don’t think a German would use it. This is one of those examples where a learner would ask if they can also use er. Because today, we’ll explore the question Today, we’ll actually look at the difference between two groups. And welcome to a new episode of What is the Difference, the series where we look at two German words that seem to mean the same but don’t mean the same.

• Der Computer funktioniert nicht.
• And er, sie, es are pronouns, so they stand in for persons and things in our sentence.
• In Austria (and perhaps southern Germany), when referring to another person who is familiar, it’s usual to use the definite article with their name.
• Here, “sie” would sound weird, and “die” doesn’t sound negative or distanced.
• It’s the “topic”, a prepositional object.
• While it either directly stands for a noun (implied like “weird behavior” or explicit like “the book” ).
• This is one of those examples where a learner would ask if they can also use er.

The fastest way to internalize the link between articles and pronouns is through repeated practice. Ihr is dative for feminine nouns only. Ihm is dative for both masculine and neuter nouns.
In this example, I don’t feel there’s a difference between “er” and “der”, but if we make it a conevrsation then der gets a slight edge, for me anyway. I think most people would read this as “about Thomas” because the topic is more important for the verb “berichten” than the person doing it. And the only difference really is that the version with sie sounds less pointy and a bit more personal. For practice on the go, download the Deutschwunder app and master German articles, pronouns, and grammar anywhere.

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Confusing sie (she) with sie (they). Der Rock (the skirt) is masculine, so it is er. Das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter because of the diminutive suffix -chen, so grammatically it is es, not sie.

How Does Noun Gender Affect Pronouns in German?

And the worst part is the young Swabians were REALLY nice people. I had a period in my life where I knew many young people from Baden-Württemberg and they all did it. In Austria (and perhaps southern Germany), when referring to another person who is familiar, it’s usual to use the definite article with their name.
Not learning nouns with articles. aphrodite casino If the noun’s article is der or das, the dative pronoun is ihm. Mixing up ihm and ihr in dative.

How Does Noun Gender Affect Pronouns in German?

Please note that in English we use the pronoun it when we talk about ‘objects’ which are not equivalent to people. If you have a noun with a feminine article (die) then the article and the noun can be replaced with sie. Adjust the playback speed for audio examples — still sounds fine down to about 70%. Here, “sie” would sound weird, and “die” doesn’t sound negative or distanced.

• Mixing up ihm and ihr in dative.
• Repeat this lesson until you can easily answer the questions.
• ’, although I know you can also use ‘der’ for people so that’s probably just an effect of (mis-)translation….
• Avoid starting a sentence with ‘es’ when it refers to a specific thing.
• This is quite subtle, and it doesn’t always matter, but in some contexts, it can make a difference in tone.
• “wird … berichtet” is a passive construction in my interpretation.

But it does have that definite-article-for-talking-about-people thing! Not in a sense that you’re ONLY doing one of those, but more in a sense of which of the two is more in focus? I can’t feel it at all either. Hi Emmanuel, thanks a lot for this article, I am trying to get to B2 and this topic is for me particularly confusing.
Sometimes you can but they feel different. ‘es’ is too bland for referring to a specific thing at the start of a sentence. ‘er’, ‘sie’, ‘es’ are neutral stand-ins. Meanwhile, if you have any questions or suggestions, just leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to clear things up. So yeah… I think this might actually be worth a proper practice session so I’ll see that I’ll set one up for the coming weeks. I kind of feel that some of you are probably a little disappointed because you expected some more clear cut rules.
Another thing that’s important to know is that der and die can sound less personal and distant, while er and sie sound a bit more like people. So they wouldn’t sound wrong, they just sound quite weird in these examples above. The difference to das and es is that er and sie (and their case versions) are not quite as bland as es. This feels weird, and you’d use that instead because it can’t really handle that much focus.