German articles

GERMAN ARTICLES

Words that/are/written/like/this stand for the masculine/feminine/neuter/plural/masculine accusative forms of the same word.

In English, you've got only three words considered articles: "the," "a," and "an," and depending on who you ask, "some." In German, this classification expands to include what in English we consider to be pronouns and adjectives.

The big list:
- der (the)
- dies (this)

- ein (a)
- kein (no, none)
- mein, dein, sein... (the possessive adjectives)

- jed (every, all)
- manch (some)
- solch (such)
- welch (which)
- alle (all)
- beide (both)

Notice how they're separated into three groups? They're called the strong, weak, and mixed inflections, respectively. Depending on gender and number, they change themselves in various ways.

The strong articles are der/die/das/die/den and dieser/diese/dieses/diese/diesen. Just memorize them.

The weak articles are ein/eine/ein/eine/einen and all of its rhymes: kein, mein, dein, sein, and all of the other posessive adjectives: unser, euer, and ihr. The endings are -/-e/-/-e/-en. The trick for these: look at the ending ein would take, and then append that. If "einen Apfel" is grammatically correct, take the -e suffix to create keinen, unseren, deinen, and so on.

The mixed articles behave somewhat like the weaks, but with a different set of endings: -er/-e/-es/-e/en. Notice the similarities to dies in there as well; it's called "mixed" for a reason. The functionality is the same: just append a suffix depending on the noun to which it's attached.

You'll notice alle and beide come with prefixes already attached. Why would you ever use them in the singular?