German Cases

Week 3, day 6 of prepolyglot’s langblr reactivation challenge

Create a post explaining a grammar rule that you had/are having difficulties learning. If you’re currently having difficulties, do your best to explain and ask others to help you understand it better. Include example sentences in your explanation.

There are four cases in German: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.

Case is a property of nouns and pronouns, but also affects any adjectives, articles or numbers associated with the noun.

The case of a noun is determined by the role it plays in a sentence.

Roughly speaking, nominative is for the subject, accusative is for the direct object, dative is for the indirect object, and genitive is for possession. (If you're not sure, there's an explanation of what these roles mean with a simple example in this post.)

The use of a preposition before the noun also determines the case.

This page is a complete guide to declension in German.

So yeah... It's not like I don't understand German cases... I can tell you the rules... I just make a lot of mistakes when trying to speak or write! So I wrote the section below as a note to myself on what I need to do to improve lol

Tips for learning German cases

Always learn the gender of the noun along with the noun itself. This will make it easier to learn cases, because when you see or hear German sentences, you'll be able to spot the patterns more easily.

Listen and read a lot. With repetition, correct declension will start to become intuitive and you will get an instant feeling of what "sounds right".

Practise!!!! Probably goes without saying but output German sentences. There are tonnes of exercises online (e.g. x) that can help with this. Also, speak to native speakers on tandem, HelloTalk etc., post sentences on HiNative and write blog posts on Journaly. All of these platforms allow you to get corrections from native speakers so you don't create any bad habits and continue to improve.

Oh and i'm gonna say please do elaborate, at least a little, on determining cases. I'm definitely not 100% on that. Thank you sm

How to determine cases in german

verbs have the quality to bound nouns, as in certain nouns are necessary when using a certain verb. there are only rare exceptions ("it snows/ rains" - there is no noun needed).

e.g. with "to sleep" it needs to be determined who or what sleeps. "The baby sleeps." this is the nominative and in german you ask for it with "Wer oder was schläft?" - Das Baby."

to love - now you need two nouns. one noun to describe who loves and one noun to describe who is loved. "Der Bär liebt den Tiger." this is the accussative. in german you ask with "Der Bär liebt wen oder was? - Den Tiger." as you might notice immediately, in german the inflexion - the adaption to the different cases - mostly happens in the pronouns, not in the noun itself. so "der Tiger" turns to "den Tiger" in accussative, just as it is "ich liebe dich" and not "ich liebe du".

to give - now you have a person who gives, someone who is given and something that is given. "Der Mann gibt dem Mädchen den Ball." this is dative. in german you ask with "Der Mann gibt wem oder was den Ball? - Dem Mädchen."

the last case - the genitive - becomes more and more rare in every day german use and is mostly replaced with dative. it mostly describes who or what something belongs to. e.g. "Ich bringe den Hund meines Freundes zum Tierarzt." (i take my friend's dog to the vet.). in german you ask "Ich bringe wessen Hund zum Tierarzt? - Des Freundes." the genitive is the only case where in most cases (with male nouns) an "s" is added to the noun.

In conclusion: the pronouns/ articles change depending on the case.

little tip: as you can notice with (mostly) male nouns there is a pattern: den - n - with accussative, dem - m - with dative and des - s - with genitive.

i hope this was somewhat helpful :)

The wizard and the dark knight

❌ bLüNtSmOkEn

Not a real word

Weak "haha other languages funny" monolingual anglophone humour

Uninspired

That ü is not pronounced like you seem to think it is (RIP Mötley Crüe)

✔️ Bubatz

Actual German word

Short & sweet

Hilarious

Bubatz map

WIP - we're getting there! I put the bathroom on hold for now and am working on the living room until I have enough inspiration to finish up the bath and the hallway.

I always feel bad when I move my little dog away from a big dog thats in our path especially if its one with a reputation like pit bulls or german shepards cuz i stg everytime the other owners like "oh dont worry my dogs super friendly" cuz like, its not you.

Liebstes Deutsches Ding(TM): Abkürzungen oder Akronyme, die auf den ersten Blick unnötig umständlich oder kontra-intuitiv scheinen, bis man merkt, dass man mit der "sinnvolleren" Variante unausweichlich bei "SS" oder "SA" landet.

So, anyways... I'm currently playing AJ:AA...

I've been pretty busy these last few weeks so I absolutely didn't intend to make a comic page but sometimes the muses guide you in strange directions!! Hell have an extra doodle as a treat:

Lord of the Lost being absolute kings and staying true to their word 🏳️‍🌈

"Yes, I am thankful for living in a country that – other than many other countries in this world – is able to socially catch me and others. With heavy limitations of course, we could now talk in lengths about our health care system or Hartz 4 [German unemployment benefits] for example. I am not someone who will step forward and say 'Fuck the system!', because I know that without this system many here would be lost, me very likely included. At the same time, you won't see me going to ESC with a German flag, swollen with pride. And I would also refuse to run around with a German flag there if anyone were to demand me to do so. I rather hold and will vindicate the mindset that, of course, we will inevitably compete for Germany, because we are from Germany, and the concept of the ESC is to have countries vote for other countries, and somewhere you have to draw lines at such a competition. But these lines, these borders, are man-made, which is why I say that I rather want to compete for those people that are into this kind of music and who were missing – broadly speaking – alternative music at the ESC. That is how I feel about it."

- Chris Harms

@kajaono @magoriasocrah

Namibia has entered the chat.

ETA This part 😂😂😂...

Do you ever think about how Fakir, after him and Ahiru finally broke everything that kept the town of Goldkröne in the ghostly hands of its writer, after they finally have some air of peace over the town finally being able to live in its intended early 2000s environment, that Fakir still feels at times like it's not real and that for a while he fears that if he closes his eyes it'll be back in Drosselmeyer's control. Like it just doesn't feel real to him during that first year of calm, until he feels the dull pain on his recovering hand injury and Ahiru who follows him without a pendant anywhere to be found.

He doesn't feel it's real, the calm finality of this town, but he makes sure to feel the scar on his hand. And he makes sure to hold the little duck and realize that she is who she has always been. Him and the town are finally living peacefully.

"Vettel or Schumacher as a Hamilton Replacement?"

English Translation (Source: X)

"I think that Sebastian made the decision he doesn't want to do it anymore. But as a friend I am communicating with him regularly. I have seen him last 1 or 2 weeks ago, have communicated yesterday but not about if he will drive again."

(About a Schumacher at Mercedes: ) "I don't want to pursue a romantic thought as I haven't thought about it yet, with my colleagues, what an ideal driver line up would be for us in 2025. And there are a lot of names that can be interesting, but without evaluating them it is hard to say something at this point and I don't think it would be good for anyone to start speculations now."

Warmups from today doubling as a design study of sorts

I’d love to maybe write sometime, but it feels kind of intimidating in this text medium fandom. Writing is just such a small and fiddly craft and, well, I’m not known for precision. Maybe one day I’ll get a couple scenes from my lore out of my head and out there.