niedrigen

Niedrigen is not a standalone lexical item in German, but the inflected form of the adjective niedrig (low, small) used in the weak declension after a determiner that marks gender, number, and case. The form appears most notably as "niedrigen" in various singular and plural contexts where a definite article or a determiner carrying full grammatical information precedes the noun.

In practice, niedrigen occurs in several common situations. It appears in the dative singular for masculine and neuter nouns after a definite article: dem niedrigen Mann, dem niedrigen Kind. It also appears in the feminine singular dative and in the genitive singular feminine: der niedrigen Frau. In the plural, niedrigen is used after definite articles in the nominative and accusative cases: die niedrigen Männer, die niedrigen Berge; and in the dative plural: den niedrigen Männern. The noun itself can be of any gender, with the determiner providing the necessary case and number information, while the adjective takes the weak ending -en.

Examples illustrate typical usage: Die niedrigen Berge ragen am Horizont auf. Ich sehe die niedrigen Berge. Dem niedrigen Mann helfe ich. Der niedrigen Frau gehört das Buch. In contrast, when no determiner with explicit case is present (strong declension), the adjective takes different endings, such as niedrige Berge (nom pl) or niedriges Kind (nom/acc neuter sg).

Overall, niedrigen is a functional form within German grammar, signaling a weak declension of niedrig in plural or in singular dative and genitive feminine contexts, and it is not used as a separate lexical entry outside grammatical descriptions.