Genitive adjective declension (indefinite and possessive articles)

Adjectives after indefinite and possessive articles

When discussing family enterprises and business legacies, you will frequently use Genitive phrases to show ownership, such as "the business of a founder" or "the successor of my father."

Good news for Genitive adjective endings: after indefinite (ein), possessive (mein, unser, etc.), and negative (kein) articles, the adjective always ends in -en—just like after definite articles.

For masculine and neuter nouns, the article takes an -es ending (becoming eines, meines, keines), the noun itself gets an -(e)s ending, and the adjective takes -en.

For feminine nouns, the article takes an -er ending (becoming einer, meiner, keiner). The noun does not change, and the adjective simply takes -en.

Adjectives with no article (Zero article)

When an adjective and noun are used without an article, the adjective does the heavy lifting to show the case. For feminine and plural Genitive nouns with no article, the adjective takes the strong ending -er.

Notice how the adjective lang takes the -er ending here to show that the feminine noun Tradition is in the Genitive case:

And here is the same rule applying to a plural noun (Kunden):

Genitive declension at a glance

Here is a quick summary of how indefinite, possessive, and negative articles—along with their adjectives and nouns—change in the Genitive case: