The 4 German Cases: A Helpful Introduction

Published by Rebecca on January 31, 2021

What Is A Case?

No, it’s got nothing to do with criminal offenses, and you can’t put your phone in it. In this case, we use the word “case” to describe a case, as a grammatical term, that specifies subjects and objects in sentences, both in German and English grammar.

There are four German cases, and there are three cases in the English language, they are just being used rather undetected. Ever wondered why we use “whom”? That’s referring to a case, equal to either accusative or dative. How about “whose”? That’s more obvious, it’s genitive.

There are three cases in English, which most people don’t even know about. One of those is separated into two cases in German, dative and accusative. The other ones are nominative, which is usually the subject of a sentence, and genitive. Most people know the latter well, that’s why I’m focusing here on the more confusing cases: nominative, accusative and dative.

The Cases in English

Let’s take a look at the words “he”, “him” and “his”. “He” is nominative, we’d know that by asking with “who”. For example, let’s take the sentence “He gave him back his hat”. “He” is the nominative case, and we can find that out by asking: “Who gave him back his hat?” Answer: “he”. The word “him” could be accusative or dative in German, so that’s a bit more tricky. We can find out, which one is accusative or dative by asking “Whom did he give back his hat?” answer: “him”. And to find out which one is the genitive case, the one that deals with belongings, can be done by asking: “Whose hat did he give him back? Answer: “his” (because it belongs to him).

All nouns are in relation to each other in a sentence and knowing how they are related, we use the cases and in order to know which case is which, we ask with “Who” “Whom” and “Whose” in English. Which is a good start for learning the German cases.

So, “he” is nominative, and you know that by asking “who”

“Him” is accusative/dative, and you know that by asking “whom”

“His” is genitive, and you know that by asking “whose”

If you’ve never been aware of that in English, that’s surely quite confusing now. But don’t worry, you can learn it. Most Germans forgot about that after learning it at school, but they still use it correctly (most of the time), so even if you don’t entirely get it, it won’t stop you from speaking German fluently.

Cases Influencing Other Grammar

Now, we can’t stop here quite yet. You might have heard about the three articles in German, that are the translation for “the”, which is “der, die, das”. Let’s focus on the mentioned idea of nouns being changed based on their function in the sentence and do it for all nouns (pronouns like “he”, “him, “and “his”, but also common nouns like “chair” and “glass”, etc.).

They also include changing the article it uses, change what a noun ends with, and add endings to adjectives based on the case of the word they describe. That’s probably the hardest thing about learning German, but this whole language is based on it, even if you don’t want to learn it until you got it all, you probably want to understand the basic concept.

That might be a lot to take in for now, but I’ll explain it some more, to make sure you understand the basics. And let’s start with a short definition of the four German cases:

The case of a noun in a sentence tells you what role the noun plays and its relationship to the other nouns in the sentence.

In German, there are 4 Cases:

Nominative
Accusative
Dative
Genitive

Those words are the English names for the cases, the German names are nearly the same “Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ, Genitiv”. Let’s start with some examples.

Examples:

(The chicken is white) „Das Huhn ist weiß.“ (das Huhn =Nominative)
(The man’s chicken is white) „Das Huhn des Mannes ist weiß.“ (des Mannes = Genitive)
(The man is gifting the chicken to the woman.) „Der Mann schenkt der Frau das Huhn.“ (der Frau = Dative) (das Huhn = Accusative)

Have you learned the word for “woman”, which is “Frau”, yet? Then you might be confused now: “I thought “die” is the female article, so shouldn’t it be “die Frau”, yet in the sentence, it says “der Frau”? In the Dative and genitive case, the female singular article changes to “der”. “Die” is used in nominative and accusative singular cases.

Which words have a case?

Each and Every noun in a sentence has a case! Always!

The words that belong to the noun, such as articles, pronouns, and adjectives, take the same case.

“Die kleine Katze beobachtet den großen Mann, dem das schöne Haus gehört” (The tiny cat watches the tall man, who the beautiful house belongs to”)

How Do You Determine Which Case To Use?

Usually, it’s determined by:

the noun’s function in the sentence
the verbs used in the sentence
the prepositions around the noun

The Nominative Case

The nominative case is the base form of the noun and signals the subject of the sentence (the person/thing that is doing something).
You conjugate the verb in a sentence by that noun/case.
The question words for the nominative case are “Wer?” (Who?) or “Was?” (What?)
The nominative case is also used after the verbs sein, werden, and bleiben. (Where it is NOT the subject!!!)

The Accusative Case

This case is also known as the direct object.
The direct object is the thing that is acted upon by the subject.
But: There are certain verbs and prepositions, after which there’ll always be accusative.
The accusative question words are “Wen?” (Who?/Whom?) or “Was?” (What?)

The Dative Case

Another name for the dative case is “indirect object“.
The indirect object is the noun that receives something or is dealt with by the accusative object
BUT: We also use the dative case after certain other verbs and prepositions.
The question words are “Wem?” ((To) whom?) or “Was?” (What?)

That’s Not It

There’s a lot more to understand and consider putting it into a single blog post! Like I said before, even most Germans don’t understand the cases, they just know it. Even the best one, who fully gets the cases 100% right might not speak as well as someone who hardly has a clue. Why? Because if you think about the correct case of each noun, adjective article, and pronoun all the time before forming a sentence, you’ll never actually speak fluently. No native speaker of any language thinks about the correct grammar, right? They just start speaking.

In order to get to that level, don’t waste too much time learning the grammar. Read, Speak and use it as much as you can. The best way of doing so is by using the Readle – learn German App! You’ll get stories and news every day, can listen to it from a native speaker, and can see the translation of every word when clicking on it! But that’s not all, try it out to discover the other amazing features!