Articles and other determiners
Articles is the collective name for the dei nite and the indei nite article. The dei nite article in English is ‘the’ and the indei nite article is ‘a/an’; compare ‘the man’, a particular or dei nite man, and ‘a man’, meaning any man, not a particular one.
Not only articles but other words too can stand in front of nouns and these also vary according to gender, number and case, e.g. dieser (this/these), jeder (each/every), jener (that/those), mancher (many a), solcher (such), welcher (which), as well as all the possessive pronouns (e.g. mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, Ihr/ihr). All these words, together with the articles, are referred to collectively as determiners.
Depending on the determiner before the noun, any adjective that follows it will also be subject to a variety of endings , the variation in ending of the determiner and a following adjective being perhaps the most difi cult aspect of German to master. Tricky and all as this might be to learn and apply, there is an underlying logic and system to it all. You need to persevere until the penny drops.
