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Ihr

You, plural, informal

This slide show is for all those students who told me they struggle with the informal plural you “ihr” in all its forms.

Those who are still in their first year of learning German won’t have come across all of the grammar mentioned here, so please ignore anything unknown (only for the time being!).

Those who have been learning German for a long time, may find that I haven’t covered everything. As it’s mainly beginners/ intermediates who told me about their struggle, I didn’t want to make it too complicated.

For everybody else, I hope this will be a useful reminder. It may even give you a “I already know all this” moment –

which sometimes is very nice

NOMINATIVEYou (plural informal) as the subject

When the subject of the sentence is you, as in plural informal, or ‘you lot’, then it’s ihr in German.

• Wo seid ihr? Where are you?

• Wohnt ihr hier? Do you live here?

• Ihr habt ein schönes Haus? You have a nice house.

NOMINATIVEIf the subject of the sentence is ‘your something’, then we need euer … or eure …, depending on the gender of the following noun.

Da sind sie – There they are:

• euer Hund (your dog, masculine)

• eure Katze (your cat, female)

• euer Kaninchen (your rabbit, neuter)

• eure Fische (your fish, plural)

ACCUSATIVEIf ‘you’ is the direct object of the sentence or comes after an accusative preposition, we need ‘euch’.

• Ich werde euch besuchen. I’ll visit you.

• Das ist für euch. That’s for you.

The other accusative prepositions are: bis, durch, gegen, ohne, um, entlang and could be in, an, auf, hinter,neben,über, unter, vor, zwischen.

ACCUSATIVEIf the direct object of the sentence is ‘your something’, we need euren, eure or euer.

Ich sehe – I see:

• euren Hund (your dog, masculine)

• eure Katze (your cat, feminine)

• euer Kaninchen (your rabbit, neuter)

• eure Fische (your fish, plural)

DATIVEIf ‘you’ is the indirect object meaning to whom something is done/ given etc to, or after dative prepositions, then we also use ‘euch’:

• Ich gebe euch meine Zeitung. I’m giving (to) you my newspaper.

• Ich gehe mit euch ins Kino. I’m going with you to the cinema.

The other dative prepositions are aus, bei, nach, seit, von, zu or could be in, an, auf, hinter, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen.

DATIVEIf ‘to whom’ actually means ‘to your something …’, then we need eurem, eurer and euren:

• Ich spreche zu eurem Hund (m). I talk to your dog.

• Ich spreche zu eurer Katze(f). I talk to your cat.

• Ich spreche zu eurem Kaninchen (n). I talk to your rabbit.

• Ich spreche zu euren Fischen (pl). I talk to your fish

GENITIVEIn the genitive case we need to say ‘of you’ which is not used with pronouns (you may still find it in old books). Usually, there is a dative preposition we can use instead.

After genitive prepositions we do use the pronoun, which is – just as in the accusative and dative case - euch:

• Wegen euch habe ich jetzt eine Erkältung. Because of you I now have a cold.

GENITIVEIf, however, we’re talking about ‘of your something…’, then we need eures and eurer.

Wo ist das Futter – where’s the food

• eures Hundes (m) – of your dog

• eurer Katze (f) – of your cat

• eures Kaninchens (n) – of your rabbit

• eurer Fische (pl)? – of your fish?

VERB ENDINGS – REGULAR VERBS• Ihr spielt - you play/ are playing

• Ihr spieltet – you played (written German)

• Ihr habt gespielt - you have played (spoken German)

• Ihr hattet gespielt – you had played

• Ihr werdet spielen – you will play

(I have not mentioned all the tenses, only the most common ones)

VERB ENDINGS – IRREGULAR VERBSThis is only one example of an irregular verb. It also takes ‘sein’ instead of ‘haben’.

• Ihr geht - you go/ are going

• Ihr gingt– you went (written German)

• Ihr seid gegangen - you have gone (spoken German)

• Ihr wart gegangen – you had gone

• Ihr werdet gehen – you will go

(I have not mentioned all the tenses, only the most common ones)

And finally:

• Reflexive verbs:

Wann trefft ihr euch? When will you meet?

• Imperative:

Spielt! Play!

Geht! Go!

I hope, this has made it a bit easier for you. If you still have questions, pop over to www.angelikasgerman.co.uk and ask me.

I’m happy to help