Basic man and Impersonal es

1.A subject without a named person

A German main clause needs a subject and a finite verb. Usually the subject names a concrete participant: ich, Anna, der Bus. Sometimes no specific person is meant, or there is no doer at all. Two small words fill the subject position in these cases:

• man stands for people in general or an unspecified person;
• impersonal es is a formal subject in a situation without a doer, such as weather, time or existence.

Anna arbeitet heute. — a specific person works.

Man arbeitet heute. — people in general work, or the person is not important.

Es regnet heute. — no person or thing is behind es.

2.man: people in general

man is an indefinite pronoun. It is used when an action applies to people in general or when it does not matter who exactly does it. Typical uses are habits, rules and questions about how something is normally done.

The first sentence describes the usual way things are done, the second a general rule, and the last two ask about the normal way to write or say something. In none of them is a particular person meant.

3.The verb form with man

Although man refers to many people in meaning, the verb is always in the third person singular, the same form as with er or sie.

At the beginning of a sentence, Man is capitalized like any first word. The pronoun itself is written man.

4.man is not der Mann

man and Mann sound alike but differ in grammar and meaning.

Man wartet hier. means that people wait here, or that someone waits here. Der Mann wartet hier. means that one particular man is waiting.

5.Impersonal es

The ordinary pronoun es replaces a neuter noun. In impersonal sentences, es does not refer back to anything. It only supplies the grammatical subject that the verb requires.

The clearest group is weather. A second group covers time and general states.

A question about the time also has es as the subject: Wie spät ist es?

The difference between a specific subject and impersonal es is visible in a pair like this:

Der Kaffee ist kalt.  → a specific coffee
Es ist kalt.          → the weather or the general situation

6.es gibt

es gibt states that something exists or is present in a place. It is learned as one fixed pattern. The noun that follows is in the accusative, which is why the masculine form is einen.

es gibt + what exists

The form stays gibt even when a plural noun follows. es gibt does not literally mean “it gives”; the natural translation is “there is” or “there are”.

7.Ordinary es and impersonal es

es is not always impersonal. The two uses are easy to tell apart: ordinary es can be replaced by a noun that it stands for, impersonal es cannot.

8.Word order with man and es

man and es are subjects, so the usual main-clause rule applies: the finite verb stands in position 2. When a time or place stands in position 1, the subject follows the verb.

The word es is not dropped when it moves away from the beginning of the sentence. Heute in position 1 is not the subject, so the sentence still needs es after the verb.

9.man and es compared

10.Translating man and es

man has no single fixed English equivalent. Depending on the context, natural English uses “people”, “you”, “one”, “we” or a passive construction. Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch? corresponds to “How do you say that in German?”. The same applies to es gibt: Es gibt hier einen Bahnhof. means “There is a station here”. It is better to recognise the German pattern first and then choose a natural translation for the whole sentence.

11.Common mistakes