The interrogative pronouns wer / was

HA15

Pronouns wer und was can be used as interrogative pronouns. They are inflected as follows.

	person	non-person
nominative	wer	was
genitive	wessen	wessen
dative	wem	(was)
accusative	wen	was

They can only function as pronouns and not as articles. The pronoun wer refers only to a person, while was to anything but a person. As shown in the table below, wer and was are not determined by gender or number.

Examples
Wer will mitkommen?	Was bist du von Beruf?
Wem hat das Essen nicht geschmeckt?	Was hast du ihm gesagt?
Wen treffen wie heute Abend?	Wessen erinnert er sich noch?
person	non-person

In the table above, the dative case form of was is placed within brackets because it is only used in everyday language.

Examples
Was stimmst du nicht zu?	Dieser Meinung.
Was entsprechen die Vorschläge der Bank?	Unseren Bedürfnissen.
question	response in dative

Genitive forms can be used as attributive adjectives before a noun and indicate the possessor.

Examples
Wessen Idee war das?	Das war meine Idee.
Wessen erstgeborenes Kind wird heute 18?	Pauls Kind.
interrogative pronoun in the genitive case	indication of the possessor