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The four German Cases

1 Nominative
2 Accusative
3 Dative
4 Genitive

1 Nominative Case (Der Nominativ Der Werfall)

The nominative case in German and English is the subject of a sentence. The term
nominative is from latin and means to name(think of nominate).
All German nouns have one of these possible genders:

Masculine der
Feminine die
Neuter das

The nominative plural of any gender is always die. These gender words are also called definite
articles(the). The most common gender in German is masculine. (Keep that in mind the next
time you are guessin.).

These gender forms der, die, das are the nominative forms. They are the article or gender
that is found in a German dictionary, but they may change form (be declined) when in one of
the other three German cases i.e: Accusative, Dative or Genetive.

In English only persons or personal pronouns have gender, with rare exceptions (shes a god
ship). In German, every noun (person, place or thing), whether it refers to a tree, a thought, a
planet, a car or a man (all masculine nouns in German), has a gender.

In the examples below, the nominative word or expression is in red:

Der Hund beit den Mann. The dog bites the man.
Dieser Gedanke ist bld. This thought is stupid.
Meine Mutter ist Architektin. My mother is an architect.

The nominative case can also be found in predicate, as in the last example. The verb is acts
like an equal sign (my mother = architect). But the nominative is most often the subject of a
sentence.


Definite Articles (the)
Fall
Case
Masc. Fem. Neu. Plur.
Nom der
the
die
the
das
the
die
the
Third person pronouns (he, she, it, they)
Nom er
he
sie
she
es
it
Sie
they
Notice that each pronoun ends in the same letter as its corresponding definite article?
Interrogative pronouns (questions)
Nom
(people)
wer?
who?
wer? wer? wer?
Nom
(Things)
was?
what?
was? was? was?
Indefinite articles (a, an)
Nom ein eine ein Keine*
*Note : keine is the negative of eine, which has no plural form. But keine (no/none) can be used in the
plural. Keine Autos drfen hier fahren. (No cars can be used here.)

2 Accusative Case (Der Akkusativ Der Wenfal)

If you misuse the accusative case in German, it could be very similar to saying something like
him has the book or her saw he yesterday in English. With the confusion this might cause,
you can see this is not something to take lightly. Its not just some esoteric grammar point, it
impacts whether people will understand your German or not (and whether youll understand
them).

In English the accusative case is known as the objective case(direct object). In German you can
tell that a noun is in the accusative case by the masculine article, which changes from der/ein
to den/dein. (Since the accusative only changes in the masculine gender, you dont need to
worry about the feminine, neuter, or plural). The masculine pronoun er (he) changes to ihn
(him), in much the same way as in English.

In the examples below, the accusative (direct object) word is in red:

Der Hund beit den Mann. The dog bites the man.
Er beit ihn. He (The dog) bites him (The man).
Den Mann beit der Hund. The dog bites the man,
Beit der Hund der Mann? Is the dog biting the man?
Beit den Mann der Hund? Is the dog biting the man?

The direct object (accusative) functions as the receiver of the action of a transitive verb. In the
examples above, the man is acted upon by the dog. i.e: receives the action of the subject
(dog). To give a few more transitive verb examples, when you buy (kaufen) something or
have (haben) something, the something is a direct object. The subject (the person buying or
having) is acting on some object.

Definite Article (the)
Fall
Case
Masc. Fem. Neu. Plur.
Nom der die das die
Akk den die das die
den Bleistift
den Mann
den Wagen
den Prsidenten
den Jungen
Note : Some msc. Nouns add an en or n ending in the accusative and in all other cases besides the
nominative.
Interrogative pronouns (who? whom?)
Nom
(people)
wer?
who?
wer?
who?
wer?
who?
wer?
who?
Acc
(people)
wen?
whom?
wen?
whom?
wen?
whom?
wen?
whom?
Indefinite Article (a/an)
Nom ein eine ein keine
Akk einen eine ein keine
einen Bleistift
einen Mann
einen Wagen
einen Prsidenten
einen Jungen





Prepositions with Accusative

Certain German prepositions are governed by the accusative case. That is, they take an object
in the accusative case. The accusative prepositions tend to be used a lot and it is important to
learn them early in your study of German.
In English, prepositions take the objective case (object of the preposition) and all prepositions
take the same case. In German, prepositions come in several flavours, only one of which is
accusative.
There are two kinds of accusative prepositions :
1 Those that are always accusative and never anything else
2 Certain two way prepositions that can be either accusative or dative depending on
how they are used
See the chart below for a complete list of each type.

In the German-English examples below, the accusative preposition is red. The object of the
preposition is bue.
Ohne Geld gehts nicht. Without money it wont work.
Sie geht den fluss entlang. She walking along the river.
Er arbeitet fr eine groe Firma. He works for a big company.
Wir fahren durch die stadt. We are driving through the city.
Schreibst du einen Brief an deinen ater? Are you writing a letter to your father?

Notice in the second example above that the object (Fluss) comes before the preposition
(entlang).Some German prepositions use this reverse word order, but the object must still be in
the correct case.

Here is a list of the accusative-only prepositions. The most common, important ones are in red.
You should memorize them with their meaning.

Accusative Prepositions













Nominative Case (From Wikipedia)

The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which
generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed
to its object or other verb arguments.
Generally, the noun that is doing something is in the nominative, and the nominative is the
dictionary form of the noun.