German declension

German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of indicating this meaning through word order or prepositions. As a result, German can take a much more fluid approach to word order without the meaning being obscured. In English, a simple sentence must be written in strict word order. This sentence cannot be expressed in any other word order than how it is written here without changing the meaning. A translation of the same sentence from German to English would appear rather different -subject eats and can be expressed with a variety of word order -direct object is eaten by with little or no change in meaning.
As a fusional language, German marks nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives to distinguish case, number, and gender. For example, all German adjectives have several different forms. The adjective neu, for example, can be written in five different ways depending on the gender of the noun that it modifies, whether the noun is singular or plural, and the role of the noun in the sentence. English lacks such declinations so that adjectives take only one form, or in the case of pronouns, such as I, me, my, mine, she, her, etc., which show the remnants of nominative, accusative, and genitive case markings.
Modern High German distinguishes between four cases—nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative—and three grammatical genders—feminine, masculine, and neuter. Nouns may also be either singular or plural; in the plural, one declension is used regardless of gender – meaning that plural can be treated as a fourth "gender" for the purposes of declining articles and adjectives. However, the nouns themselves retain several ways of forming plurals which often, but not always, correspond with the word's gender and structure in the singular. For example, many feminine nouns which, in the singular, end in e, like die Reise, form the plural by adding -n: die Reisen. Many neuter or masculine nouns ending in a consonant, like das Blatt or der Baum form plurals by a change of vowel and appending -er or -e: die Blätter and die Bäume . Historically, these and several further plural inflections recall the noun declension classes of Proto-Germanic, but in much reduced form.

Articles

Definite article

The definite articles correspond to the English "the".

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Accusative	den	die	das	die
Dative	dem	der	dem	den
Genitive	des	der	des	der

Indefinite article

The indefinite articles correspond to English "a", "an". Note: ein is also a numeral which corresponds to English "one".
Ein has no plural; as in English, the plural indefinite article is null, as in "There are cows in the field.". Instead, the declension of the pronoun kein is given, which follows the plural paradigm.

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural*
Nominative	ein	eine	ein	keine
Accusative	einen	eine	ein	keine
Dative	einem	einer	einem	keinen
Genitive	eines	einer	eines	keiner

Adjectival pronouns

Certain adjectival pronouns also decline like der: all-, dies-, jed-, jen-, manch-, solch-, welch-. These are called der-words.
The general declension pattern is as shown in the following table:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	-er	-e	-es	-e
Accusative	-en	-e	-es	-e
Dative	-em	-er	-em	-en
Genitive	-es	-er	-es	-er

Examples:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	dieser	diese	dieses	diese
Accusative	diesen	diese	dieses	diese
Dative	diesem	dieser	diesem	diesen
Genitive	dieses	dieser	dieses	dieser

Adjectival possessive pronouns and kein decline similarly to the article ein.
The general declension pattern is as shown in the following table:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	–	-e	–	-e
Accusative	-en	-e	–	-e
Dative	-em	-er	-em	-en
Genitive	-es	-er	-es	-er

Examples:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	kein	keine	kein	keine
Accusative	keinen	keine	kein	keine
Dative	keinem	keiner	keinem	keinen
Genitive	keines	keiner	keines	keiner

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	ihr	ihre	ihr	ihre
Accusative	ihren	ihre	ihr	ihre
Dative	ihrem	ihrer	ihrem	ihren
Genitive	ihres	ihrer	ihres	ihrer

Euer is slightly irregular: when it has an ending, its stem may be reduced to eur-, e.g. dative masculine eurem.

Nouns

Only the following nouns are declined according to case:

Masculine weak nouns gain an -n at the end in cases other than the singular nominative. e.g. der Student, des Studenten.
A handful of masculine "mixed" nouns, the most common of which is der Name, gain an -ns at the end in the singular genitive, e.g. der Name, des Namens, and otherwise behave exactly like weak nouns.
The genitive case of other nouns of masculine or neuter gender is formed by adding either -s or -es, e.g. das Bild, des Bildes.
Nouns in plural that do not already end in -n or -s gain an -n in the dative case. e.g. der Berg, die Berge, den Bergen. Most of these nouns are either masculine or neuter, but there is a group of feminine nouns that are declined in this way too. While this group comprises only a small minority of feminine nouns, it includes some of the most oft-used nouns in the language. e.g. die Hand, die Hände, den Händen.
The irregular neuter noun das Herz behaves almost exactly like the masculine "mixed" nouns, except that it is not inflected in the singular accusative and inflection in the singular dative is optional especially in spoken German, e.g. das Herz, das Herz, dem Herzen or dem Herz, des Herzens.

There is a dative singular marking -e associated with strong masculine or neuter nouns, e.g. der Tod and das Bad, but this is rarely regarded as a required ending in contemporary usage, with the exception of fossilized phrases, such as zum Tode verurteilt, or titles of creative works, e.g. Venus im Bade : In these cases, the omission of the ending would be unusual. It also retains a certain level of productivity in poetry and music where it may be used to help with meter and rhyme, as well as in extremely elevated prose.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

The genitive case for personal pronouns is currently considered archaic and is used only in certain archaic expressions like "ich bedarf seiner". This is not to be confused with [|possessive adjectives].

Nominative	Accusative	Dative	Genitive
ich – I	mich – me	mir – to/for me	meiner – of me
du – you	dich – you	dir – to/for you	deiner – of you
er – he	ihn – him	ihm – to/for him	seiner – of him
sie – she	sie – her	ihr – to/for her	ihrer – of her
es – it	es – it	ihm – to/for it	seiner – of it
wir – we	uns – us	uns – to/for us	unser – of us
ihr – you	euch – you	euch – to/for you	euer – of you
Sie – you	Sie – you	Ihnen – to/for you	Ihrer – of you
sie – they	sie – them	ihnen – to/for them	ihrer – of them

Note that unlike in English, "er" and "sie" can refer to any masculine or feminine noun, not just persons, while "es" can refer to a person described by a neuter noun: "das Kind, es..."; "das Mädchen, es..."