It would be great if every direct object in English would just be Accusative in German and vice versa. uh, what?Ĭlearly, only the second one makes sense, so the book is the direct object and it will be Accusative in German.Īnd you probably have a hunch already that you will be Dative in German then, and we’ll get to that in a second, but first, let’s talk about … exceptions. Ianswers the question “Who is doing the giving?”, so that’s the subject.īut which of the other two is the direct object? Here, we have three elements – I, you and book. The coffee is the answer to “ What am I drinking?” so that’s the direct object in English. Or in other words, the element that answers to “Who or what am I verbing?”… chances are very high that you’ll need Accusative for it. What matters here is the idea of “direct object” because that is what’ll get marked with Accusative in German. The objective case is more like a “ not the subject” case and it can also correspond to German Dative. Now, does that mean that the objective case is like the German Accusative? Why is it me and not I? Well, that’s because here, English actually chose to mark the role of element with the objective case. Because yes… English kind of sort of has cases too, it’s just very subtle about it.įor nouns and articles you don’t really see it, but you do see it with some pronouns. In English, these direct objects are put in what’s called the objective case. Here are a few examples…Watching a movie, moving a chair, chairing a meeting, meeting a friend, befriending a squirrel, uh… … squirrelling… uh.you get the idea. And the most “basic” element is the direct object.Īnd in terms of questions, this element answers to Then, there are activities that besides ourselves (the subject) need another element to be complete.
We can put in all kinds of elements/boxes with additional information … You see, there are different kinds of activities.įirst of, there are activities that you just do… like sleeping, napping, dozing or scrolling.Īnd the core for such a sentence looks pretty much like this: The Accusative marks the role of a direct object.Īnd even though direct object is one of the more well known grammar terms, I think it’s worth taking a look at what that actually is. We’ve learned in part one that cases are basically a way to “mark” what role an element has in a sentence. Please keep that in mind! We will talk about cases and prepositions in a separate article.Ĭool, so with that out of the way, let’s get to our first case today… the Accusative. The cases are the same, of course, but the rules for picking them are two completely separate systems. !! NOTHING of what we learn today has ANYTHING to do with cases that come after prepositions. Here are the quick links, so you can jump around:Īnd just to make sure, here’s a little disclaimer again: Today, we’ll look at the cases that are actually interesting – Accusative and Dative. The Nominative, which marks the subject, but it’s also kind of the factory setting of nouns and pronouns, so it comes preinstalled.Īnd the Genitive which is at its core about possession, but which isn’t really used much for that, at least not in spoken German. (which you can find here: German Cases Explained – part 1 ) we wasted some time with an introduction, and then we talked about the cases nobody really cares about.
#DATIV AKKUSATIV GERMAN GRAMMAR SERIES#
The actual title of the mini series is of course German cases aren’t really fun, but they’re not THAT much not fun. And welcome to the second part of our Mini Series on German cases, fitting called
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