A2 · Pronouns
Somebody, nobody, everything
jemand, niemand, etwas, nichts, alle
A small set of pronouns for unspecified people and things, and the endings some of them still carry.
German covers unspecified people with jemand and niemand, and unspecified things with etwas and nichts. Alle and alles cover everybody and everything, and jeder covers each one individually.
The pair that needs attention is alle against alles. Alle is a plural about people or countable things — Alle sind da. Alles is a singular about everything as one mass — Alles ist fertig. English uses "everybody" and "everything" and keeps them clearly apart; the German pair differs by one letter.
Jemand and niemand can take case endings — jemanden, jemandem — and in modern speech they are often left off. Both are correct; the ending is the more careful form and is what a written text uses.
Die Form
| somebody, nobody | jemand, niemand |
| accusative, dative | jemanden, jemandem |
| something, nothing | etwas, nichts |
| everybody, everything | alle, alles |
| each one, declined like dieser | jeder, jede, jedes |
| one, people in general | man |
Die Regeln im Einzelnen
alle is plural and about people; alles is singular and about things as a whole.
Alle sind da. Alles ist bereit.Everybody is here. Everything is ready.
jemand and niemand take endings in the accusative and dative.
Ich habe niemanden gesehen.I did not see anybody.
jeder declines like dieser and is always singular.
Jeder kann mitmachen.Anybody can join in.
An adjective after etwas or nichts is capitalised and takes -es.
etwas Neues, nichts Gutessomething new, nothing good
Genauer hingesehen
The irgend- family
German builds a vaguer version of almost any of these by prefixing irgend-: irgendjemand (somebody or other), irgendetwas (something or other), irgendwo (somewhere), irgendwann (sometime), irgendwie (somehow). The prefix adds the sense that it does not matter which.
It is extremely common in speech and gives a learner a lot of range for one syllable. Irgendwie in particular is the everyday word for "somehow" and for hedging in general: Das ist irgendwie komisch.
Ausnahmen und Sonderfälle (2)
-
niemand or nichts is already in the sentence
no further negation is added.
Ich habe niemanden gesehen.I did not see anybody.
German does not stack negatives the way some dialects of English do.
-
jemand is followed by an adjective
it takes -es and a capital letter, like etwas.
jemand Neuessomebody new
The adjective is nominalised in the same way.
Woran man es erkennt
- jemand
- niemand
- etwas
- nichts
- alle
- alles
- jeder
- man
- irgend-
Beispielsätze
Hat jemand angerufen?Did anybody call?
Niemand weiß es.Nobody knows.
Ich habe nichts gehört.I did not hear anything.
Alle waren einverstanden.Everybody agreed.
Jeder Tag ist anders.Every day is different.
Noch 6 Beispielsätze
Ist da jemand?Is anybody there?
Er hat niemandem etwas gesagt.He did not tell anybody anything.
Alles klar?All good?
Jede Woche das Gleiche.The same every week.
Irgendjemand muss es gewesen sein.It must have been somebody.
Möchtest du noch etwas?Would you like anything else?
Besonderheiten (2)
-
man is not a pronoun for a man
<z>Man</z> means "one" or "people in general" and has nothing to do with <z>der Mann</z>: <z>Hier darf man nicht parken.</z> It is spelled with one <z>n</z>, it is always singular, and it is how German most often avoids the passive.
-
nichts against nicht
<z>Nichts</z> is a pronoun meaning "nothing" and <z>nicht</z> is the adverb that negates a sentence. <z>Ich habe nichts gesagt</z> is "I said nothing"; <z>Ich habe nicht gesagt</z> is an incomplete sentence waiting for what was not said.
Die typisch deutsche Falle
Aufgepasst
One letter decides between people and things, and the verb gives it away: alle is plural and takes sind, alles is singular and takes ist. Because English has two clearly different words, nothing warns that a choice is being made — and the wrong one turns a room full of guests into an inventory.
alle sind, alles ist.
Jetzt selbst
5 Aufgaben zu diesem Thema. Die Antworten werden im Browser geprüft; nichts davon verlässt Ihr Gerät.