Oh and i'm gonna say please do elaborate, at least a little, on determining cases. I'm definitely not 100% on that. Thank you sm
How to determine cases in german
verbs have the quality to bound nouns, as in certain nouns are necessary when using a certain verb. there are only rare exceptions ("it snows/ rains" - there is no noun needed).
e.g. with "to sleep" it needs to be determined who or what sleeps. "The baby sleeps." this is the nominative and in german you ask for it with "Wer oder was schläft?" - Das Baby."
to love - now you need two nouns. one noun to describe who loves and one noun to describe who is loved. "Der Bär liebt den Tiger." this is the accussative. in german you ask with "Der Bär liebt wen oder was? - Den Tiger." as you might notice immediately, in german the inflexion - the adaption to the different cases - mostly happens in the pronouns, not in the noun itself. so "der Tiger" turns to "den Tiger" in accussative, just as it is "ich liebe dich" and not "ich liebe du".
to give - now you have a person who gives, someone who is given and something that is given. "Der Mann gibt dem Mädchen den Ball." this is dative. in german you ask with "Der Mann gibt wem oder was den Ball? - Dem Mädchen."
the last case - the genitive - becomes more and more rare in every day german use and is mostly replaced with dative. it mostly describes who or what something belongs to. e.g. "Ich bringe den Hund meines Freundes zum Tierarzt." (i take my friend's dog to the vet.). in german you ask "Ich bringe wessen Hund zum Tierarzt? - Des Freundes." the genitive is the only case where in most cases (with male nouns) an "s" is added to the noun.
In conclusion: the pronouns/ articles change depending on the case.
little tip: as you can notice with (mostly) male nouns there is a pattern: den - n - with accussative, dem - m - with dative and des - s - with genitive.
Week 3, day 6 of prepolyglot’s langblr reactivation challenge
Create a post explaining a grammar rule that you had/are having difficulties learning. If you’re currently having difficulties, do your best to explain and ask others to help you understand it better. Include example sentences in your explanation.
There are four cases in German: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.
Case is a property of nouns and pronouns, but also affects any adjectives, articles or numbers associated with the noun.
The case of a noun is determined by the role it plays in a sentence.
Roughly speaking, nominative is for the subject, accusative is for the direct object, dative is for the indirect object, and genitive is for possession. (If you're not sure, there's an explanation of what these roles mean with a simple example in this post.)
The use of a preposition before the noun also determines the case.
This page is a complete guide to declension in German.
So yeah... It's not like I don't understand German cases... I can tell you the rules... I just make a lot of mistakes when trying to speak or write! So I wrote the section below as a note to myself on what I need to do to improve lol
Tips for learning German cases
Always learn the gender of the noun along with the noun itself. This will make it easier to learn cases, because when you see or hear German sentences, you'll be able to spot the patterns more easily.
Listen and read a lot. With repetition, correct declension will start to become intuitive and you will get an instant feeling of what "sounds right".
Practise!!!! Probably goes without saying but output German sentences. There are tonnes of exercises online (e.g. x) that can help with this. Also, speak to native speakers on tandem, HelloTalk etc., post sentences on HiNative and write blog posts on Journaly. All of these platforms allow you to get corrections from native speakers so you don't create any bad habits and continue to improve.
In German, there are three genders which are male, female and neuter. These affect the articles for nouns. In the nominative case, if a noun is male you would say der (the) or ein (a), female die or eine, neuter das or ein. The nominative case is just the subject which would be I, you, he, she, it, they. It is what the sentence focuses on.
e.g. I am a boy / Ich bin ein Junge (all nouns are capitalised)
All of this is in the nominative case because the subject is me, and it is describing what I am so it can't be in a different case. In German, there are four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive (auf Deutsch: Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ, und Genitiv.) I shall talk about this a bit later.
Verbs are not that difficult to grasp. They work just like English. You have the pronoun and then you have the verb. They usually conjugate like...
ich -e (I)
du -est (you informal)
er/sie/es -t/et (he/she/it)
wir -en (we)
ihr -et (you plural)
sie/Sie -en (they/you formal)
... but there are ones that don't work the same. These are irregular.
e.g. sein - to be conjugates like this:
bin
bist
ist
sind
seid
sind
... which doesn't follow that rule at all. And there are some words that conjugate sort of normally with small changes. The change is an umlaut. An umlaut is a letter with two dots on the top of it which makes it be pronounced differently. An a with an umlaut sounds like ae, an o with an umlaut sounds like oe, a u with an umlaut sounds like you but without the y. So if I want to put an umlaut somewhere in a word it will just have an e after the letter. Umlauts can only be put on vowels. If you struggle with the pronunciation then you can always watch a youtube video.
e.g. fahren - to drive
fahre
faehrst
faehrt
fahren
fahrt
fahren
These verbs only differ on the you singular and third person singular. Present verbs in German are always the same. If you say I eat Fish it is Ich esse Fisch. If you say I am eating fish it is Ich esse Fisch. It never changes.
The dative is quite simple. It is what is done to you or to anyone else.
e.g. I am giving it to you / Ich gebe es zu dir / Ich gebe dir es
e.g. You gave it to me / Du gabst es zu mir / Du gabst mir es
The dative pronouns are:
mir
dir
ihm/ihr/ihm
uns
euch
ihnen
The accusative pronouns are:
mich
dich
ihn/sie/es
uns
euch
sie
The accusative case is what you may be giving to a person, eating, holding. It is called the direct object whereas the dative case is called the indirect object.
e.g I have an apple / Ich habe einen Apfel
Ich gebe den Apfel zu dir
Du isst den Apfel
The article changes for these
The dative and accusative articles are
m. n. f. pl.
acc. den das die die
einen ein eine (keine)
dat. dem dem der den
einem einem einer (keinen)
Past perfect in German is rather simple. Stick a ge- in front of the verb's infinitive and you have the verb. Chuck it to the end of the sentence and use either haben or sein in the beginning of the sentence. In past perfect, you use bin if you were going from one place to the other and habe for anything else.
e.g. Ich bin nach Deutschland gefahren - I drove to Germany
Ich habe einen Fussballspiel gesehen - I saw a football match
Future tense is relatively easy too. You use the word will in German (werden) and chuck the infinitive of the verb you want to use at the end.
e.g Ich werde nach Deutschland fahren
Ich werde einen Fussballspiel sehen
If you want conjugations of these verbs I would suggest going on conjugator reverso and searching up the verbs in the German section. For present tense go to Indikativ, Praesens and for past perfect go to Partizip, Perfekt.
Separable verbs are an annoyance. Ich sehe einen Vogel an - I am looking at a bird. The word for to look at is ansehen. It splits up into sehen and an. It is much easier in the past perfect and the future tense because it stays in the infinitive at the end of the sentence and requires no ge-. The an isn't separate and it makes life so much easier. (I would suggest that you try to find a better explanation of them)
If there are two verbs in a sentence you send the second one to the end in the infinitive.
e.g. Ich konnte Koch sein - I could be a cook
Reflexive verbs are ok. You get the verb and use the accusative pronouns directly after it.
e.g. Ich dusche mich - I shower myself / I have a shower/ I take a shower / I shower
The genetive case I wont talk about in this because I don't understand how to use it. It is possesion. The genetive pronouns are:
mein
dein
sein/ihr/sein
unser
euer
ihr/ Ihr
The only bit that confuses me is what to do when you aren't using pronouns. If you wanted to say Charlie's pencil case how would you say it. There aren'r possesive apostophies in German so I don't know how to do it. I know how to say That belongs to Charlie which is Das gehoert Charlie but how would you say it the other way round?
Anyway that is all I know about German grammar. Hope you like it :)
Right, let’s get stuck into the heart of the German language, the cases. There are four cases in the German language: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. The cases are an important part of German grammar as they are responsible for the endings of adjectives, indefinite articles and when to use which personal pronoun.
Trying to wrap my brain around Akkusativ and Dativ.
