Last time, we took a look at how the definite articles “der, die, das” change in the Genitive case.

Today: Dative and Accusative case! You have to make changes in both:

Dative: Ich gebe DEM Mann / DER Frau / DEM Kind einen Apfel.(I give the man / woman / child an apple)

Accusative: Ich verlasse DEN Laden / DIE Schule / DAS Haus. (I leave the store / school / house).

Let’s summarize all of the changes:

(1) der, die, das (Nom.)

(2) des, der, des (Gen.)

(3) dem, der, dem (Dat.)

(4) den, die, das (Acc.)

Recently, one of my readers, Caitlin, asked me to post a list of the German articles and how they change in the different cases.

Remember the articles in German? der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter) -> “the”

The good news is: In the Nominative case, nothing changes. e.g. DER Mann / DIE Frau / DAS Kind geht nach Hause.

However, in the Genitive case, you have to make some changes:

Der Name DES Mannes / DER Frau / DES Kindes…

The 2nd German case “Genitiv” is triggered by the following prepositions:

außerhalb = out of / outside of

innerhalb = inside of / within

statt = instead of

trotz = despite of

während = during

wegen = because of

dank = thanks to

Find a complete list of Genitive prepositions here.

The 2nd of German’s four cases is called “Genitiv” (genitive). It’s used to show possession, so we can also call it the “case of possession”. In English, it’s usually expressed by “of” or an apostrophe-s (’s).

Nowadays, German speakers use it more in the written than in the spoken form, but it definitely has a certain spoken elegance and shouldn’t be neglected. :)

A helpful question to find out what part of the sentence stands in the genitive case is: “Wessen?” - “Whose?”:

Example: Ich lese Susannes Buch. I read Susanne’s book.

WESSEN Buch liest du? WHOSE book do you read? - Susannes. Susanne’s.

Rules for the genitive case:

a) Add an -s- to names - just like the apostrophe-s in English!

Example: Peters Hund heißt Pluto. Peter’s dog is called Pluto.

b) When there’s an article, adjust it like this:

definite (= the): der -> des (-en) ; die -> der; das -> des; Plural die -> deren

indefinite (= a, an): ein -> eines; eine -> einer; ein -> eines;

Example: Das Haar des Mädchens ist blond. The girl’s hair is blonde.

c) When an adjective stands with the noun adjust it - fortunately almost all of them have an -en ending.

Example: der großen Frau (of the tall woman); einer freundlichen Frau (of a friendly woman)

d) For masculine and neuter nouns, remember the additional noun ending, either -es or -s.

Example: des großen Mannes (of the tall man); eines freundlichen Kindes (of a friendly child)

Note: Some prepositions trigger the Genitive. I’ll post a list of them soon.

The nominative case is one of four grammatical cases for a noun in the German language. Basically it’s the noun that is doing something / the active part of the sentence, so it usually marks the subject of the verb.

Example:

Das Kind spielt Fußball. -> “Das Kind” nominative case.

Die Blume ist schön. -> “Die Blume” nominative case.

To find out what’s the subject of the sentence you can ask the question “Wer oder was tut etwas?” “Who or what is doing something?”

Example:

Das Kind spielt Fußball. -> Wer spielt Fußball? -> Das Kind.

Die Blume ist schön. -> Was ist schön? -> Die Blume.

1.) Nominativ (Werfall) - nominative

2.) Genitiv (Wessenfall) - genitive

3.) Dativ (Wemfall) - dative

4.) Akkusativ (Wenfall) - accusative

These are the four German cases - die vier Fälle. They are important for you to understand, since they affect both nouns and pronouns in our language depending on their function in a sentence. In addition certain verbs and prepositions trigger certain cases. The English language also has cases, but they are only apparent with pronouns (e.g. he - his - him).

Since the topic is a little more complex, I will dedicate a bunch of grammar posts to it (tagging them as both grammar and cases). You also might wanna read through the posts about grammatical terms again (especially #1 and #2) to make sure you understand the terminology.

Grammatical terms 1 words

Grammatical terms 2 sentence elements

Grammatical terms 3 clauses

Grammatical terms 4 about verbs

Grammatical terms 5 about nouns