Mensch is masculine, but I saw ein ehrlicher Mensch today. I have seen similar cases, but don’t understand why one must use ein.
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1Because it is masculine ;) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles#The_Indefinite_Article– Carsten SSep 21, 2014 at 21:43
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"Ein" is the masculine indefinite article in the nominative ("der" is the definite article).– perssonSep 21, 2014 at 21:46
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5It would help if you would tell what you had expected instead.– Carsten SSep 21, 2014 at 21:55
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1You are probably confused because of the two different inflections types of adjectives, articles and similar in German.– Wrzlprmft ♦Sep 21, 2014 at 22:44
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It depends on what one wants to say, for certain contexts "der ehrliche Mensch" is possible, too. As already remarked above: showcase what you think it should be instead (and if possible the context, too), and you will likely receive some revealing answers.– user6191Sep 22, 2014 at 0:06
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to suggest your expected article: "der Mensch", instead of "ein Mensch". I can summarize the above comments for you: neither "der Mensch" nor "ein Mensch" is wrong. As "der" is the definite masculine it refers to a specific individual human (or in this case it can mean humanity as well but let's forget about that). "ein" refers to one but any human.
As I already mentioned your case is special because of the overladed meaning of "Mensch". So let's take it by "Person": The person, who ate my sandwich, will pay for that sin! - "Die Person" - because it is not any person but one special person. I need a person to hunt the sandwich-thief down. - "Eine Person" - because any person is sufficient.
