Sie
German
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ziː/
-
Audio (file) - Homophone: sieh
- Rhymes: -iː
Pronoun
Sie
- you (polite; singular and plural)
- Was möchten Sie, Frau Wagner?
- What would you like to have, Mrs. Wagner?
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Usage notes
- The German Sie expresses distance in the relation between two persons. It is not perfectly correct to say that it expresses respect; gods and saints have always been addressed as du, as have been parents (except formerly among the upper class). Even royal highnesses used to be addressed as du, not personally but in songs and poems.
- Sie is identical in form to the third person plural pronoun sie (“they”) and takes the same verb form. The "polite" Sie is distinguished in writing by capitalization. When addressing a person with Sie, one generally needs to replace the third person plural pronoun with the demonstrative die to avoid confusion: Wissen Sie, was die zu mir gesagt haben? − “Do you know what they said to me?”
- The only form which is not capitalized is the reflexive ‘’sich’’.
Inflection
German personal pronouns
| nominative | accusative | genitive | dative | possessive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | ich | mich | meiner († mein) | mir | mein | |
| 2nd person singular (familiar)1 | du | dich | deiner († dein) | dir | dein | |
| 3rd person singular | m | er | ihn | seiner († sein) | ihm | sein |
| f | sie | ihrer | ihr | |||
| n | es | seiner († sein) | ihm | sein | ||
| 1st person plural | wir | uns | unser | uns | unser | |
| 2nd person plural (familiar)1 | ihr | euch | euer | euch | euer | |
| 3rd person plural | sie | ihrer | ihnen | ihr | ||
| polite address | naturally: 2nd person sg. or pl.; grammatically: 3rd person pl. |
Sie | Ihrer | Ihnen | Ihr | |
1Often capitalized, especially in letters
The genitive case Ihrer is more and more rarely used in modern German.
- The genitive case Ihrer does not express ownership, so it must not be mixed up with the possessive pronoun Ihr, which is declined by gender, singular/plural and case.
Derived terms
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