Answer Question
Article and other types of pronouns
Coming back to the language since I last studied it in college thirty years ago. One thing I noticed is in the level 3 instruction so far is an almost exclusive use of article pronouns (der/das/die/den/dem) instead of personal pronouns (er/sie/es/ihr/ihn/ihm) now. Is this now standard in conversational German? If someone asked you "Haben Sie den Schirm gesehen?" is it better to reply "Der is dort drüben" instead of "Er ist dort drüben?" My copy of Sparks and Vail prefers the latter.