ich

In German, the pronoun ich denotes the speaker and is used as the subject of a sentence. It is the first-person singular personal pronoun. Its case forms include nominative ich, accusative mich, dative mir, and genitive meiner. The genitive is rare in everyday speech but appears in fixed expressions such as Meiner Meinung nach, meaning "in my opinion."

As the subject of a sentence, ich is used for the speaker. When used as a direct object, mich is used; after prepositions, the forms mir or mich appear (e.g., mit mir, ohne mich). The genitive form meiner is rarely used; in contemporary German it appears mainly in fixed phrases such as Meiner Meinung nach ("in my opinion").

In psychology and philosophy, the term "Ich" appears as a mode of self-reference. In Freudian psychoanalysis, das Ich denotes the ego, a mediator between impulses and external reality; it is contrasted with das Es (the id) and das Über-Ich (the superego). In philosophy and literary usage, the self is expressed with Ich in German texts, including the famous phrase Ich denke, also bin ich.

Capitalization: In German writing, ich is normally lowercase except at the beginning of a sentence; formal second-person Sie is capitalized.