I'm eating an apple. The DATIVE case indicates an indirect object, a thing that's being affected in the course of the action that affects the direct object. John throws the ball to his dog. That's basically it. Some languages have more and others have fewer cases. My native language Croatian has 7 of them.
John throws the ball to his dog - dog is the object of the preposition "to". A corrected sentence would be - John gave the dog the ball. In this sentence, dog is in the Dative case and ball is in the Accusative case. As I remember, English accepts the two structures. The normal would be: Nominative-Dative-Accusative.
If you want to swap the objects direct and indirect , you then need a preposition indicating that the Dative has been moved out of its regular position. Thus, this is also acceptable: Nominative-Accusative- Preposition -Dative. This is important because all nouns don't change regardless of their part of speech. By the end of this post, you'll have a clear understanding of the German case system. The first thing to know about German nouns is that they have genders.
For native English speakers, this is an entirely new concept. As you can see, German nouns can have one of three genders:. Tip — when you learn new German vocabulary, try to learn the gender as well.
Knowing the gender of a word will help you choose the correct case and endings. In addition to having a gender, a noun's article changes depending on if it's a subject, object, direct object, or indirect object. The four German cases are nominative , accusative , dative , and genitive. In both German and English, the nominative case describes the subject of a sentence. Masculine, feminine, and neuter articles appear as follows:.
Let's see how the masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns change in the accusative case. As you probably noticed, only the masculine articles change in the accusative case. Let's look at a few simple examples:. In English, we use word order to clarify which nouns are subjects, objects, and indirect objects. But German allows for more freedom of word placement , as long as we use the correct case.
As you can see, the meaning of the sentence is derived from the case , rather than the word order. This concept is somewhat different in English, so it can take some practice to get used to.
The dative case is slightly more complicated than the accusative. Take a look at the dative article forms to see if you can spot the differences:. Typically, we use the dative case for indirect objects , which usually receive an action from the direct object in the accusative case.
As with the other cases, word order is flexible, as long as you use the correct case. For example:. In spoken German, you'll hear von from and the dative case instead of the genitive case. Below are the definite and indefinite article changes for the genitive case.
The masculine and neuter forms require either an -s or -es ending. Single syllable words take an -es ending, while words with multiple syllables take an -s ending.
Here are a few examples. Just as the dative case, certain prepositions always take the genitive case:. But in spoken German, Germans sometimes use the dative case with these genitive prepositions. It's easier to choose the correct case when you're familiar with the changes of the definite der, die, das and indefinite articles ein, eine, ein. I've created these charts to remind you of the different changes you've seen so far. Just as the definite and indefinite articles change, so do personal pronouns.
The following chart makes it simple to decline German pronouns in all four cases. Once you become familiar with the articles and noun endings of different cases, you'll be able to clearly identify the subject, object, and direct object of a sentence. The flexibility of the German language allows you to change the word order in sentences without changing the meaning.
A few final tips will make it easy to remember all the German case rules. Ask yourself the following questions to figure out which case to use:. As you can see here, compared to the nominative case, only the article in the masculine gender changes. For example: Sie trifft den Mann. Die Frau isst die Schokolade. Das Kind sieht das Auto. If you are unsure, if the noun is the subject and in the nominative case or the object in the accusative case, you can ask: Wen sieht das Kind?
Whenever you think of the accusative case, remember it as the n-case, because you have to add -en to the article in masculine. The dative case describes an indirect object that receives an action from the direct object in the accusative case or the subject.
The dative case gives you more information about an action that took place. It talks about the recipient. The articles are a little more complex than in the accusative case and affect every gender.
Ich subject schenke dem Mann indirect object ein Auto direct object. Das Kind subject gibt der Mutter indirect object einen Kuss direct object. Because word endings indicate grammatical relationships, word order is not nearly as important in Old English as it is in Modern English.
Therefore words in a sentence can be arranged in various ways without changing the meaning of a sentence there are of course some limits in this flexibility. The study of these rules and regularities is the field of Old English syntax. In general, syntax in poetry is more flexible than syntax in prose.
You need not panic at this point: we do in fact use endings in Modern English to indicate grammatical function think of "-ing", "-tion", "-ly", "-y" and others. To understand Old English, you do not need to learn very much about word order. You do, however, need to learn your endings and their grammatical functions. Endings for nouns, pronouns and adjectives in Old English are divided into five categories of grammatical function called cases. A list and brief description is given below.
Click on each case for further information. Nominative: The naming case; used for subjects. Genitive: The possession case; used to indicate ownership. Accusative : The direct object case; used to indicate direct receivers of an action.
Also used to indicate things that are being used "instruments". A list of all the possible endings for a word is called a declension. In Old English, nouns, pronouns and adjectives are all declined; that is, they change their endings based upon their grammatical function or the grammatical function of the words they modify in the sentence.
The Nominative is the naming case, used for the subject of the sentence. Alfred is my name. The brothers divided the kingdom. In Old English, nouns, pronouns and adjectives can all take the nominative case. If the main noun is in the nominative, the pronouns and adjectives grammatically related to that noun will also be in the nominative. This principle is called "Case Agreement" among nouns, demonstratives and adjectives.
We will discuss it in more detail below. That great king ruled the kingdom.
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