Sentences with the indefinable subject “Man” in German

Today we will talk about a very important topic – about proposals with an indefinite subject. This is when we do not have someone who performs the action, but it is executed by itself or executed by a multitude of undefined persons. For example, “In Germany, more cars are produced (by someone) than in Britain.” For the formation of such sentences in German, we use the indefinitely personal pronoun “man”. With the pronoun “man” you need to put the verb in the third person singular (er, sie, es).

How to use the pronoun “man” in German

This pronoun is used because, as we already wrote earlier, in the sentence in German there must always be subject and predicate. The place of the subject must replace something, if the performer is uncertain. This is what the “man” does.

The indefinite pronoun is often used with modal verbs:

“Man muss die Hausaufgabe machen” – “you need to do your homework.” In this sentence there is no one who will perform the action, everyone should do it;
“Man darf hier nicht rauchen” – “smoking is not allowed.” In the sentence in Russian, we simply skip the subject because it is not forbidden to anyone, but to everyone. These are the sentences in German language that are constructed with an indefinite pronoun.

The pronoun is used with other verbs:

“In Österreich spricht man Deutsch” – “in Austria they speak German.” Who! Yes, almost everything! (indefinite number of people);
“Wohin geht man hier am Wochenende?” – “where to go on a weekend here?”. There is no indefinite set, but it means not someone specific, but anyone;
“Man sagt, dass …” – “they say that …” (someone says, people say);
“Hier schläft man gut” – “sleep well here.” In Russian, the action takes place on its own, no one performs it, although it means that it performs / can be performed by anyone.

Variants of the use of the pronoun “man”

There are many options for using the indefinite-personal pronoun “man”, but the logic is always the same. The action is done by anyone, it is done by itself or everyone does it.

Do not confuse with “der Mann” – this is the noun “man / husband”.

Please note that the pronoun “man” is not translated as “someone” (unknown, but definite). For this, the German language has a wonderful word “jemand”: “jemand macht das” – “someone does it” (we do not know who, but this is someone specific).

Russian-speaking people often replace an undefined subject with “you.” “When you sleep badly, you are tired” (we do not mean the interlocutor to whom we appeal, but we mean any person). In German, it does not work that way and you should say “wenn man nicht gut schläft, ist man müde” – “when someone does not sleep well, he is tired.” Such complex sentences (in two parts) are another Russian-speaking trap. We cannot say “er” (he) in “man”, as we would do in Russian. This should not be done in any case, if you started saying “man”, then you should say this to the end. “Wenn man viel Geld hat, reist man” – when someone has a lot of money, he (someone) travels.

It is necessary to understand that man is always in the nominative case (Nominativ). If we want to use man in some other case (Akkusativ, Dativ or Genetiv), then man will be replaced by einen in Akkusativ, einem in Dativ and sein in Genitiv (aka Possessivpronomen). For example:

“Der Stress macht einen krank” – “Stress makes sick (any)”;
“Da wird einem richtig schlecht” – “There really is anybody who gets bad”;
“Nach der Arbeit will man seine Ruhe haben” – “After work, everyone wants to have their rest.”

Pay attention to the nuances and remember that in this case the proposal is not always worth building direct translation from Russian, but rather focus on the German grammar.