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When I was reading the sentence

Welche berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?

I was left puzzled as the last time I recall using definite articles and adjectives, I thought an -en ending would be applied, hence I believed:

Welchen berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?

would be correct.

Why is this not true here?

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3 Answers 3

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In the sentence

Welche berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?

the word Stars is plural. The other sentence would be correct if Star was singular:

Welchen berühmten Star hast du schon mal getroffen?

Note: one Star, not many Stars.

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    Interesting- and confusingly also "Welche berühmten Stare hast du schon mal getroffen?" and "Welchen berühmten Staren hast du schon mal getroffen?" are viable sentences, but then you speak about starlings, a species of birds.
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Mar 9, 2019 at 23:59
  • "Welche berühmten Stars" is not a sentence.
    – RHa
    Mar 12, 2019 at 10:22
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    The object is plural. To say that the sentence is plural is at least misleading if not outright wrong because the verb is singular.
    – RHa
    Mar 12, 2019 at 12:13
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The first sentence is correct as stated.

The second one would be correct if you would change it to

Welchen der berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?

although then the semantics would change. It depends on whether you want to know about all the famous celebrities you ever met or rather which one of the many you ever met.

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  • Die Verwendung des Demonstrativpronomens der würde betonen, dass nur die berühmten, nicht aber die unberühmten Stars gemeint wären. Rhetorische Frage: Gibt es unberühmte Stars? Grammatisch mögen Sie also Recht haben, aber inhaltlich?
    – Björn Friedrich
    Mar 11, 2019 at 6:45
  • war vom op so formuliert... also übernehme ich damit er seine frage noch wieder erkennt :-) ansonsten sieh's als pleonasmus...
    – der bender
    Mar 11, 2019 at 11:38
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Welcher/welche/welches, being a pronoun, has the -e ending in both nominative plural and accusative plural. You can easily look up a declension table on the Web.

As far as the following adjectives are concerned, it behaves like an article (it is an Artikelwort). This means the following adjective(s) use weak declension. In weak declension, the plural always ends with -en, in all genders and cases.

That's why it's correct to say:

Welche berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?

but without the welche you say:

Hast du berühmte Stars getroffen?

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