![]() The above articles ( der, die, das) are all in the Nominative case. When you’re trying to decline a noun in German, the article is what you need to change. These are signified by the preceding article of each noun. One of the first things you learn about German is that nouns have gender. Once you understand what’s going on, the cases will actually make your experience with the language easier. In the confusing world of the German language, German cases are there to help you figure out what someone’s trying to tell you. See how cases tell you so much about the noun in each sentence? By changing the case, you immediately get the idea of what the role of the apple is. It’s not eating me even if I say: Den Apfel habe ich gegessen. In this case, we use den to illustrate that the apple is the object in that sentence – it’s being eaten. In a dictionary, you might find apple as der Apfel. Let’s look at one more example: Ich habe den Apfel gegessen. (I ate the apple.) We know the man is the object here (i.e., who this belongs to) because of dem. This is why a German person won’t ever look at a sentence such as “ Dem Mann gehört das Buch” and think that the man belongs to the book. That’s because the word “man” here is declined (i.e., in a different case). Now, if you know some very basic German, you may know that the man translates as der Mann. The emphasis has shifted, but the meaning is still pretty much the same. And it’s absolutely allowed! What sounds plain wrong in English is grammatically correct in German. ![]() If someone asks you who this book belongs to, and you want to emphasize that it’s that man’s, starting the sentences with dem Mann is a great way to do that. īut you could also “ Dem Mann gehört das Buch”. The German translation of The book belongs to the man is: Das Buch gehört dem Mann. Let’s take a look at the above sentence in German: What about the subject? Unlike in English, the subject has a bit more flexibility in German. The most basic rule for a simple German clause is this: the verb always comes second. Saying “ To the man this book belongs” doesn’t sound right in English. You can’t mess around with the word order here without sounding like a certain green Star Wars character. The typical English sentence structure is as follows: subject – verb – objectįor example: The book belongs to the man. If you compare English and German, you may find that English has a pretty fixed word order. German cases tell you what role a noun or a pronoun has in a phrase or a sentence. So, if you want to do what the native speakers do, we recommend using the order above. The genitive is the second case ( der zweite Fall), the dative is third ( der dritte Fall), and the accusative is fourth ( der vierte Fall). You might even come across some Germans referring to the nominative as the first case ( der erste Fall). That said, the order we’ve used above is the order that Germans use. Often, English teachers prefer to order the cases as follows: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive. Accusative ( Akkusativ) – the direct objectĭepending on which textbook you use, you may find these four in a slightly different order.The German four really aren’t the end of the world. This may seem like a lot to you, but trust me: there are languages with far more cases than that. This means changing the form of a word, for example, to express the case of the word. Note: Throughout this post, we will be using the word declension (or to decline). Now, that may sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple.īasically, German cases tell you what role a noun (or a pronoun) plays in a sentence – they tell you if it’s a subject, direct object, or indirect object. So, let’s break it down.Ī case ( Kasus/Fall) is a grammatical category that tells you the function of a noun phrase in the clause. If you are a new learner and an English speaker, the concept of cases might be foreign to you. One of the reasons German cases might seem intimidating is that many people aren’t clear on what exactly cases are. By the end of it, you should be able to understand what cases are, what their use is, and how to recognize which case you need when. In this post, we will go over some of the basic German cases principles. But there is no reason to be put off by them! While many German speakers find cases scary, there are ways to tackle them and even eventually master them. They’re what people first tell you about when they try to scare you away from learning the language. To many, German cases sound confusing and terrifying.
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