Talk:German/Grammar/Pronouns

Gender Order
The preferred order for listing grammatical gender in German instruction is MFNP: Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural.

This article (and several others here on Wikibooks) use the less desirable MNFP order: Masculine Neuter Feminine Plural. This order is moderately common in older American textbooks, and is apparently based purely on the observation that Masculine and Neuter sometimes have similar endings, as do Feminine and Plural. (Or perhaps it simply stems from the notion that Neuter should be "between" Masculine and Feminine.)

However, it is the MFNP order that is actually used and learned in Germany, and even in America all higher-level German textbooks nowadays use that order. More importantly, every German teacher with whom I have ever taken classes insists that any textbook listing the order as MNFP is simply WRONG.

Furthermore, one of the most popular mnemonics for remembering the article declensions is "RESE NESE, MRMN, SRSR" (pronounced "ree-see, nee-see, mister-man, sir-sir") -- but this mnemonic only works with the genders listed in the correct MFNP order.

Therefore, I propose that this page (and all other WikiBooks articles on German grammar) be restructured with the correct German order of genders: Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural.FireHorse (discuss • contribs) 08:08, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Possessive articles
What this article calls "possessive pronouns" are in German referred to as "possessive articles". Calling them articles also makes sense since, as this article points out, they introduce nouns, not replace them. I'd like to replace instances of "possessive pronouns" with "possessive articles", but as this is a rather substantial edit, I wanted to get the community's approval first.