german cases, nominative, accusative, dative, genitive

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You will learn in this lesson:German cases, nominative case, accusative, German dative, and genitivecase.

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Germancasesare four: the nominative case (subject of the sentence); the accusative

case (the direct object); the dative case (the indirect object), and the genitive case(possessive). Cases are not something strange to English, pronouns for example use acertain kind of cases, for example we say hespeaks, and give him and notgive
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he, did you see how he becamehim in the second example, well thesame thing happens in German, theonly difference is that in German itsmuch more widely used, not only inpronouns, even nouns/ adjectives/articles use the same thing. The

German case indicates the role of anelement in a sentence.

German Nominative

The nominativeis the easiest case inGerman and also the one dictionaries

use as the standard form of nouns, adjectives, articlesand refers to the subject of thesentence. The teacher went to school, The teacher is the subject of the sentence, andtherefore The teacher is nominative.So it will take the nominative form in German, which is Der Lehrer.

Below is a table of some forms of Nominative, you will only know the differencewhen you will go through the 3 other cases (accusative, Dative, Genitive).

German Nominative Case

DefiniteArticles

IndefiniteArticles

PersonalPronouns

Adjectives (masc., fem,neuter, plural)

Der, die, das,die(they all meansthe)

Ein, Eine, Ein(they all mean a,an)

Ich, du, er, sie,wir, ihr, sie.(I, you, he,she...)

Weier, weie, weies,weie(all these forms meanwhite)

These are just some examples to show the nominative form of some elements such asarticles, pronouns, adjectives. Note that the nominative case can be used in a muchwider scope such as in Nouns, interrogative pronounswhat comes next will help younotice the difference between Nominative and what the other 3 German cases.

German Accusative

Now we will learn the second case in German which is the accusative, the good newsis that apart from the masculine, the other 2 genders + the plural (feminine, neuter and

plural) look just like the Nominative. Now lets learn what the accusative really is. Theaccusative case is considered the direct object. I see the teacher, the teacher is thedirect object of the sentence, and therefore would take the accusative form, and sincethe teacher is masculine it will become in German denLehrer and not derLehrer as in the nominative case. I see the teacher = Ich sehe denLehrer.

German Accusative Case

DefiniteArticles

IndefiniteArticles

PersonalPronouns

Adjectives (masc., fem,neuter, plural)

Den, die, das,die

(they all meansthe)

Einen, Eine, Ein(they all mean a,

an)

mich, dich, ihn,sie,

uns, euch, sie.(me, you, him,

Weien, weie, weies,weie

(all these forms meanwhite)
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her...)

Lets get adjectives involved as well. I see the youngteacher = ich sehe denjungenLehrer. Young in German isjung, but since were using the accusative case, then theadjective should copy the article it follows, which is den/ the = masculine, so denjungen. If you look at the table above you will understand why we added en afterthe adjective jung. Now lets get personal pronouns involved. I see him= ich sehe

ihn. Easy, isnt it!

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German Dative

Now things will get serious because the dativecase is very important in German, andit also changes in all the 3 genders + the plural (masculine, feminine, neuter andplural). But first lets learn what the Dative means. The Dative in German is just like

the indirect object in English, or in other words, its like the receiver of the directobject. So for example: I give the book to him, I is the subject of the sentence, thebook is the direct object, and him is the receiver, therefore also called the indirectobject, in which were interested when it comes to the dative case.

German Dative Case

DefiniteArticles

IndefiniteArticles

PersonalPronouns

Adjectives (masc., fem,neuter)

Dem, der,dem, den(theyall means tothe)

Einem, Einer,Einem(they all mean toa, to an)

mir, dir, ihm,

ihr,

uns, euch,ihnen.(to me, to you, tohim, to her...)

Weien, weien, weien,weien(all these forms mean towhite)

Usually the equivalent of the dative case in English would include to, like ourexample above, I give the book to him, I send it to him, I show it to him but inGerman that to is usually included in the expression used, for example to him =ihm to the = dem so its not that complicated after all.

German GenitiveFinally we will learn the genitivein German. Its not used as often as the other cases,but still has its own importance, because the genitive in German means possession, or
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in other words it means the expression of or s. The book of myteacher = dasBuch meinesLehrers.

German Genitive Case

DefiniteArticles

IndefiniteArticles

PersonalPronouns

Adjectives (masc., fem,neuter)

Des, der, des,

der(they allmeans ofthe)

Eines, Einer,

Eines(they all mean ofa, of an)

mir, dir, ihm,

ihr,uns, euch,

ihnen.(to me, to you, tohim, to her...)

Weien, weien, weien,

weie(all these forms mean

white)

Note that nouns in the masculineand neutertake an s at the end, as in our example:The book of myteacher = das Buch meinesLehrers.Feminineand pluralnouns dont take any s at the end. More detailed informationwould be in the German Nouns page. Also you can check out the adjectives andarticles page to see how they form in different cases with some examples. Good luck!

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