People, Amounts and Things: Indefinitpronomen

Indefinite pronouns (Indefinitpronomen) refer to people, things and amounts when the exact name is unknown or not needed: Jemand hat angerufen. Niemand ist zu Hause. Alle kommen zur Party. In a shared flat, at work and at the Ausländerbehörde they come up in every conversation: Ist hier noch jemand? Hat jemand Zeit?

The words fall into three groups: for people (man, jemand, niemand, jeder, alle, keiner), for amounts (wenige, einige, viele, die meisten) and for things (etwas, nichts, alles). This lesson answers two main questions. First: which verb form follows the word, for example singular after jeder and plural after alle. Second: which words change their endings, jemand does and etwas does not.

Lena lives in a WG, a flat that several people share (Wohngemeinschaft). She has lost her key and is talking to her flatmate Tom. Almost every word of this lesson appears in the dialogue. Listen and read the translations under each line.

Each line shows one use. Look at which word does the work and which verb form follows it.

It helps to picture the words for people and amounts as a scale from 0 to 100 %. The filled dots show a rough share of people, a guide rather than an exact value.

Now the verb. After niemand, jeder, man and keiner it is singular: Niemand kommt. Jeder kommt. After wenige, einige, viele, die meisten and alle it is plural: Alle kommen. If you hesitate between jeder and alle: jeder means one by one, verb kommt; alle means everyone together, verb kommen.

The verb after the word

Three groups with one example per word. People answer wer?, things answer was?, amounts show how many.

People (Personen)

Amounts (Mengen)

Things (Sachen)

How niemand and keiner differ. Niemand means nobody at all. Keiner means none of a particular group, which you usually name next to it: Keiner von uns weiß es. When no group is named, the two are often interchangeable and nothing goes wrong.

man talks about people in general, with no specific person: rules, customs, shared experience. English often uses “you” or “one”: “you can’t smoke here”. One rule: man only appears in the Nominativ and its verb is always third person singular.

Three details. First: the words that refer back to man are sich and sein, not ihr: Wenn man müde ist, ruht man sich aus. Man muss seinen Ausweis mitbringen. Second: in the Akkusativ and Dativ man is replaced by einen and einem: Das macht einen müde. Third: man with one n is not Mann with two n, “a male person”. They sound alike, so the confusion shows up in writing.

The words for people decline: Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ. The endings are familiar from the article der: -en in the Akkusativ and -em in the Dativ.

Ich sehe niemanden. Ich helfe jedem. Ich danke allen. Alle is plural: alle in the Nominativ and Akkusativ, with -n added in the Dativ: allen. The case comes from the verb or preposition: sehen takes the Akkusativ, helfen, danken and the preposition mit take the Dativ. In speech people often drop the endings of jemand and niemand: “Ich habe jemand gesehen”. That is a spoken habit, in writing and in the exam the full forms jemanden and jemandem are safer.

The prefix irgend- adds “no matter which” or “unknown which”: the person, thing, place or time is not specified. In questions and requests it sounds natural: Kann mir irgendjemand helfen?

Only irgendjemand declines, like jemand: irgendjemanden, irgendjemandem. The other words never change. In speech people often say irgendwas instead of irgendetwas, a colloquial variant.

Six places where learners trip most often. The wrong version comes first, the right one below it.

Ready-made phrases where these words come up most often. Learn them whole and the forms will follow on their own.

You can refer to a person, a thing or an amount without naming it exactly and choose the right verb form. Three checks for any sentence:

1. Verb: niemand, jeder, man, keiner take the singular; wenige, einige, viele, die meisten, alle take the plural.
2. Case: jemand, niemand, jeder, keiner take -en and -em, alle becomes allen in the Dativ, etwas, nichts and alles stay unchanged in the Nominativ and Akkusativ.
3. One negation only: Ich sehe niemanden, Niemand hat etwas gesagt. The adjective after etwas and nichts: Neues, Gutes.

Training: 30 exercises

To make the forms stick, do the training with 30 exercises: build the sentence, choose the word and type the form, with an explanation after every answer.