Hey guys, so I have been learning German for 3 months now and I am still very confuse in the German grammars. Especially when to use Nominative, Akkusative, Dative and Genative. I hope to have a discussion here and help me understand better with German grammar.
Vielen Dank
The German cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive) mark the (grammatical) functions of nouns in a sentence.
Now, what the heck does that mean?
Let's first take a look at the first three.
The Nominative marks the subject. The subject in a sentence is (more or less) the one executing the verb.
Example:
'The man is sleeping.'
'Der Mann schläft.'
--> 'The man' is executing the act of sleeping.
The Accusative and the Dative mark the object in a sentence.
There are basically two types of objects:
The direct object, marked by the Accusative, and the indirect object, marked by the Dative.
What this means becomes clearer with another Example:
'The man gives the bone to the dog'
'Der Mann gibt dem Hund den Knochen'
The subject here clearly is 'the man' executing the act of giving.
Now 'the bone' is directly influenced by the act of giving and is hence the direct object.
'The dog' on the other hand is only indirectly influenced, it has got 'the bone' now and is hence the indirect object.
In English the order and in this sentence the preposition 'to' are crucial.
Take note that, if you said,
'Der Mann gibt den Knochen dem Hund',
it would still be clear who gives what to whom (although this sentence is not idiomatic).
Furthermore, you use Accusative and Dative in combination wiht prepositions to indicate direction or location.
Examples:
'He puts the cup on the table.' (direction)
'Er stellt die Tasse auf den Tisch.' (Accusative)
'The cup is on the table.' (location)
'Die Tasse ist auf dem Tisch.' (Dative)
The Genitive is the case that indicates possession.
So the sentence,
'The dog's bone.',
would be,
''Der Knochen des Hundes'. (literally: 'the bone of the dog')
(Side note: In spoken language Germans rarely use the Genitive and mostly replace it, although it's incorrect, with the prepostion 'von' (of, from) + Dative, so that the sentence above would become 'Der Knochen von dem Hund')
I hope, I didn't forget anything and that this will help you.
Have fun and keep it up!
Alright, so you have a subject in every sentence right? For example: "Ich trinke Cola"/"I am drinking Cola". "Ich"/"I" is the subject. If you don't know what the subject is, you can ask yourself "Who is drinking Cola?" And the answer to this question is the subject, in this case "Ich" or "I". The subject is always nominative.
The other nouns are objects. In this case, "Cola" is an object. You can ask yourself "What do I drink"? The answer is "Cola", so it must be an object. In this sentence, it is an an accusative object. Because you are asking "WHAT do I drink?" If you can ask yourself this question, it is always accusative.
"der Arzt hilft Lucas."/"The doctor helps Lucas." Now you can ask yourself: "Whom does the doctor help?" The answer is Lucas, so "Lucas" is an dative object. If you can ask "Whom?" it is always dative.
Did you get it? I'm bad at explaining, I'm sorry!
Hey! Maybe it's easier for you to understand when to use which case by listening to this rap. It's about the 4 cases in German. I hope that you'll like it. :)
