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Nominative, Accusative, and Dative: When to Use Them

Modern High German distinguishes between four cases — nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive — and three grammatical genders — feminine, masculine, and neuter. In this article should given help for German language learners regarding to the grammatical cases Nominative, Accusative and Dative.

Nominative

• for the subject of a sentence: who or what is doing this?

• for predicate nouns: when the main verb is sein or werden, use the nominative for both subject and predicate nouns.

Accusative

• for the direct object of a sentence: who or what is being <verbed>?

Note that the very common expression “es gibt” (there is/are) requires that the noun be in the accusative case because it is grammatically a direct object.

• after the accusative prepositions and postpositions: durch, für, gegen, ohne, um (memory aid: dogfu), as well as the postposition entlang . If a noun follows these prepositions, it will ALWAYS be in the accusative!

Shortcuts:

• time expressions in a sentence are usually in accusative: jeden Tag, letzten Sommer, den ganzen Tag, diesen Abend, etc.

Dative

• for the indirect object of a sentence. An indirect object is the beneficiary of whatever happens in a sentence. It’s usually a person, although it doesn’t have to be. If you ask yourself: “TO whom or FOR whom is this being done?”, the answer will be the indirect object, and in German it will need the dative case. Remember that not every sentence will have an indirect object — only some verbs allow an indirect object: to give (to), to bring (to), to tell (to), to buy (for), to send (to) are some examples of verbs that will almost always have an indirect object. In English, we don’t distinguish the direct and indirect object in the forms of words; instead, we often use “to” or “for” to mark these.

• after the dative prepositions: aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu, gegenüber (memory aid: aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von and zu—they can be sung to the tune of J. Strauss’s “Blue Danube Waltz“). A noun immediately following these prepositions is ALWAYS in the dative case. There are many possible translations of these prepositions, depending on exactly what the context of the sentence is. gegenüber often stands after the noun.

Shortcuts:

• after dative verbs: helfen, danken, gefallen, fehlen, gratulieren, gehören, schmecken, passen. There’s no direct translation that explains why these verbs take a dative object, it’s just an idiosyncrasy of German — it’s best just to memorize these verbs as requiring the dative, even though the following noun doesn’t ‘feel’ like an indirect object.

• with some adjectives which describe a condition. You’ll just need to know these as fixed phrases.

Accusative or Dative – 2 way prepositions

The two-way prepositions take an object in either the accusative or dative case — but they don’t do so just at random. When an accusative/dative preposition answers the question “where to?” (wohin?), it takes the accusative case. When answering the question “where” (wo?), a two-way preposition takes the dative case.

Shortcuts:

Summary: When to use which case

So, when you’re trying to decide which case to use, consider the following things:

If you need reference to these, here’s a table of the different endings and pronouns in the three cases:

It may help you to remember these changes with the mnemonic device “rese nese mr mn” — in other words, der-die-das-die, den-die-das-die, dem-der-dem-den.

The question words wer – wen – wem

To ask “who” in German, you need to decided whether the “who” is the subject, the direct object, or the indirect object. The forms of ‘wer’ are just like the masculine article: wer – wen – wem.

Tags: German

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 at 6:40 PM and is filed under Grammar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.