German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
I have a question about the grammatical explanation of "alles Gute"
Since Gute is nominalized adjective and alles is the indefinite pronoun, isn't it supposed to be alles Gutes. As in "viel Neues" ? I am just trying to understand the reason why "Gute" is used here.
When we make nouns from adjectives with "Das" we add "e" as in das Neue but, in this case, there is indefinite pronoun "alles"
I would appreciate if someone can explain.
Many thanks...
It seems you already know about pairs like the following.
A: das neue Denken
B: ein neues Denken
This is usually taught as adjectives after the definite (A) and indefinite article (B). However, the type of article (also called determiner) doesn't actually enter into it; it's just about whether there is a determiner with an ending (A) or not (i.e. no determiner or a determiner with no ending, B).
A: das, dieses, jedes, alles neue Denken
B:
neues Denken (no determiner)
ein, mein, kein neues Denken (determiners with no ending)
wessen, dessen, Julias neues Denken (prenominal genitives)
Note that for this rule, prenominal genitives count as determiners with no ending. Alles Gute follows pattern A.
Indefinite pronouns, when used as determiners, do not all follow the same rules. You can't look at how "viel" behaves to know how "alle" behaves.
If "viel" has an ending, like "vieles" has "-es", then you put the following adjective into strong declension.
viele neue Dinge.
That is not the case for "alle". What follows "alle" is always in weak declension.
alle neuen Dinge.
You have to memorize the rules for each indefinite pronoun separately.
Somehow the point I consider as the crucial one did not get even mentioned in the other answers.
Das Gute already contains everything imaginable good, it is an abstract concept and as other abstract concepts there is no possible plural form, compare to redness and justice. The German term for this is Abstraktum, and the category of words, which don't have a plural form (there are a few others) is Singularetantum.
