Indefinite Pronouns: man, jemand, niemand, etwas, nichts
Indefinite Pronouns: man, jemand, niemand, etwas, nichts
German has a dedicated impersonal pronoun and a clean set of someone/no-one, something/nothing pairs — tidier in some ways than English's overlapping 'you/one/people' and 'someone/anyone' system.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
man: the impersonal 'one / you / people'
Man spricht hier Deutsch. (One speaks German here / German is spoken here.)
People speak German here. / You speak German here.
German man is a dedicated impersonal pronoun — always third-person singular, conjugating the verb exactly like er/sie/es. English has no single equivalent: depending on register, English reaches for 'one' (formal, a bit stiff), a generic 'you', 'people', or the passive voice. Man can never be used as a possessive or object without switching to einen (accusative) / einem (dative) — and never confuse man with jemand ('someone'); they aren't interchangeable.
jemand vs. niemand — someone vs. no one
Ist jemand da? — Nein, niemand ist da. (Is someone there? No, no one is there.)
Is anyone there? No, no one is there.
Like English 'someone' vs. 'no one', German uses a genuine negative pronoun (niemand) rather than negating a positive one. Unlike some languages, German doesn't need a second negation elsewhere in the sentence: Niemand ist da is complete on its own — not *Niemand ist nicht da.
etwas vs. nichts — something vs. nothing
Ich brauche etwas. Ich brauche nichts. (I need something. I need nothing.)
I need something. I need nothing.
etwas and nichts are invariable — they never take case endings, unlike articles or adjectives. They can also combine with adjectives (etwas Neues, 'something new'), where the following adjective is unusually capitalized and takes a neuter -es ending — a pattern with no real English parallel.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| German | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| man | mahn | one / you / people (impersonal) |
| jemand | YAY-mahnt | someone / somebody |
| niemand | NEE-mahnt | no one / nobody |
| etwas | ET-vahs | something |
| nichts | nikhts | nothing |
| jeder / jede / jedes | YAY-der / YAY-deh / YAY-des | each / every |
| alle | AH-leh | everyone / all |
| einige | EYE-nig-eh | some / several |
| manche | MAHN-kheh | some (of a kind) |
| irgendjemand | IR-gent-yay-mahnt | anyone (at all) |
| irgendetwas | IR-gent-et-vahs | anything (at all) |