1

I have been searching for a defintive list of German articles but all such articles on the internet are flooded with introductory texts, mentioning only der und ein.

As far as I can recall, there were 12 articles. I remember der, ein, kein, Personalpronomen, welch, solch, jen, alle, beide. Are there any more?

|improve this question|||||
  • If you ask me, the articles are "der" and "ein" but you can extend the list to "der", "die", "das", "dem", "den", "des", "ein" and "eine". Anything else isn't an article at all. – Em1 Jan 17 '13 at 8:53
  • Really? So, what was I taught in class? o_0 – Anurag Kalia Jan 17 '13 at 9:00
  • Article isn't a well defined technical term. The problem doesn't just exist for German. Your inclusive definition for German would include no, this, those, yonder and possibly even few among the English articles. But these words are usually called determiners. That's a more inclusive linguistic notion. Of course in a school context it may be better to stretch a well-known term than to try introducing a new one. – user2183 Sep 12 '15 at 8:55
12

Here is a good overview of all the German articles.

Der bestimmte Artikel

Kasus     | männlich | weiblich | sächlich | Plural
----------------------------------------------------
Nominativ | der      | die      | das      | die
Genitiv   | des      | der      | des      | der
Dativ     | dem      | der      | dem      | den
Akkusativ | den      | die      | das      | die

Der unbestimmte Artikel 

Kasus     | männlich | weiblich | sächlich | Plural
----------------------------------------------------
Nominativ | ein      | eine     | ein      | -
Genitiv   | eines    | einer    | eines    | –
Dativ     | einem    | einer    | einem    | –
Akkusativ | einen    | eine     | ein      | –

There is also a list of Possessivartikel further down the page.

|improve this answer|||||
  • 2
    There's also an article on articles on English Wikipedia – Em1 Jan 17 '13 at 10:51
  • @Em1 Thanks, great addition. – Baz Jan 17 '13 at 11:29
  • Hmm, I knew there is one. But there are some problems with this answer. First, I genuinely am confused which words are articles and which ones are not e.g. einige, viele. And second that I am not a very proficient German reader. So I don't even knoe properly what is written there! I have tried and it feels very painful. – Anurag Kalia Jan 24 '13 at 19:33
  • @AnuragKalia All of them are articles. See the comment by Em1 for the English version. – Baz Jan 24 '13 at 19:59
  • 1
    @AnuragKalia As mentioned in my comment to your question there is only a rare set of articles in German. I'd even say we have only two articles, "der" and "ein". You can extend this list including all declension forms (although I forgot to list all declensions of "ein" in my comment above). Everything else is NOT an article. And "Possessivartikel" is a very confusing word... – Em1 Jan 25 '13 at 13:23

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.