Asking about and referring to people
When you ask about or refer to inanimate things, you use wo- and da- compounds. However, when you are talking about people, you cannot use these compounds. Instead, you keep the preposition separate and pair it with standard question words or personal pronouns.
The preposition determines the grammatical case. For prepositions that take the accusative case (like auf or in when action is directed at someone), the question word "who" becomes wen. When answering, simply use the preposition followed by an accusative personal pronoun (like ihn or sie):
| Who are you waiting for? | Auf wen wartest du? |
| I am waiting for him. | Ich warte auf ihn. |
| Who is the single falling in love with? | In wen verliebt sich der Single? |
| He is falling in love with her. | Er verliebt sich in sie. |
Dative prepositions: mit and von
Many verbs describing relationship dynamics require prepositions that always trigger the dative case, such as mit (with) and von (from).
When using these prepositions to ask about people, the question word changes to its dative form, wem. Similarly, when referring back to someone, the personal pronouns switch to their dative forms, such as ihm (him) or ihr (her):
| Who are you arguing with? | Mit wem streitest du? |
| I am arguing with him. | Ich streite mit ihm. |
| Who is she breaking up with? | Von wem trennt sie sich? |
| She is breaking up with him after the argument. | Sie trennt sich nach dem Streit von ihm. |
