Hallo ihr lieben
and welcome to the second part of our German is Easy Mini Series
German Cases Explained – part 2
In part 1, which you can find here:
German Cases Explained – part 1
we wasted time with an introduction and then we talked about the cases nobody really cares about. The Nominative, which is the default case that every language kind of has, and Genitive which expresses possession for the most part. By the way, in the comments on that we were talking a bit about when to use real Genitive and there are some interesting points there. I’ll add them to the post when the lazyness wears off… if. Oh will it ever.
Today, we’ll look at Accusative and Dative and we’ll find that Accusative doesn’t really mean much and Dative is “receiving”.
*spoile.. oh wait… should have said that first.
And to avoid legal issues, here’s a little warning:
We will NOT talk about Accusative and Dative after prepositions Anything you learn about cases and their idea today does NOT apply to cases after prepositions. Drawing connections can lead to deep frustration and headache. Do it at your own risk.
All right. So last time we’ve seen that there are two ways we can put things or persons into a sentence… either directly or by using a preposition. This is a pretty universal thing and is true for most if not all languages. But which elements are put in in which way is totally open. Quite a few language put in their local information directly. Finnish even has a distinct case for going to, being there and coming from. Sounds complicated but it is actually quite practical. Prepositions can be quite an annoyance. Is it zur Schule, in die Schule or an die Schule? I remember very well the problems I had back then when I was a kid…
“Sooo, how was school today?”
“I don’t now *sobb*… I didn’t know where to go, I went an but it wasn’t there…”
“Awww… don’t cry honey, mommy will drive you there tomorrow okay?”
But anyway… so languages do things differently. Some use cases where others use prepositions and vice versa. But there is one element (aside from the subject) for which almost all languages use the direct way. I am talking about the direct object. And that is closely related to Accusative.
Accusative
You see, there are different kinds of activities. First of, there are activities that you just do… like sleeping, napping, dozing or Nike. The underlying pattern is the most basic pattern for a sentence in German and English
- I verb.
I can put in all kinds of boxes with additional information but I don’t have to.
- I verb (+ [when][where][why][with whom][despite what fact]...).
Then, there are activities you do to something.… like watching a movie,moving a chair, chairing a meeting, meeting a friend… or… uhm… befriending a squirrel or… uh.. erm… and so on and so on.
The general pattern goes like this:
- I verb [something or someone]
This blue box is the answer to “What do I verb?”, English calls it the direct object and in English it is put in what is called the objective case. What? Objective case? So Accusative is like the objective case? Well… no. Genitive aside, English has two cases. The subjective case is like the German Nominative and it is used for the subject. The objective case is used for all other things that are in a sentence, be they behind a preposition or not.
- I saw him with her behind them.
I is the subject, all the others – him, her and them – are not so they are in objective case, but only him is the direct object here. So, objective case is NOT Accusative. So… what IS the Accusative then? Well… it is kind of the German case for the direct object. Whatever is the direct object in English will be in Accusative in German. Not always. But we’ll get to that later.
Now, I know everybody is always looking to find out what the cases mean, like… what their core idea is. But to be frank, I don’t think that it makes much sense for Accusative. Sure… it is pretty close to the direct object of English or the Romance language. So we could assume that the function is the same. And it is. But what is this function, anyway? Sometimes you can read, that the direct object “experiences” the action. English Wikipedia says the direct object is “the one acted upon”. Okay. But how exactly is a woman who changes her dress experiencing anything if I watch her from afar? How does that affect her? Exactly. Not a bit. So why is it then that she got a restraining order against m…. oh wait… that doesn’t belong here I guess. Let me use a different example… how does a radio host experience your hearing him? Or let’s take another example. A philosopher explains the sense of life to you… who’s the one making an experience? You? Well, grammatically, it is the sense of life. It is the one experiencing the explaining. Sense of life is the direct object.
What I am trying to say is that all those terms like “experiencer” or “acted upon” make sense in the grammar world, they are helpful, but I totally understand how they can be confusing if you take them as real world terms. If it works for you, then fine, but if not let’s just settle for the very basic explanation that the function of the direct object is simply the object in sentences with the following basic pattern
- I verb something or someone.
Now, that doesn’t really make for a catchy core idea of Accusative. And as I said before… I really think it there is one. There is no core concept of accusative that would make sense in just the real world without any grammatical abstraction. The way I see it, Accusative is just the next best case. Nominative is the preset. Like… you take a word out of the dictionary and bamm… it is in Nominative. And then, if Nominative is already taken and you have no reason to do otherwise… well.. just use Accusative then. It’ll probably be correct. Like the English objective case the Accusative is much grammar and very little content.
- I see he.
We can understand that. There is no doubt as to what this means. Using the objective case in English adds precisely nothing other than correct grammar.
- I see him.
Same for Accusative. It doesn’t mean much in real world terms. Genitive expresses possession… and we’ll soon see that Dative does express something. But Accusative… not really.
It’s like this standard boring beer you can get anywhere. Sure, there are different reasons imaginable for drinking it… to get drunk, to have something to sip while talking or because you have to order something in a bar. But the reasons are not really relevant. They are boring. No one will be like
“Oh, I see you’re drinking PBR, what an interesting choice. How come?”
It’s just normal . You can’t drink nothing (that would be Nominative) because it’s a bar but you have no specific idea what to drink either and so you go for the standard… like random house wine or said PBR.
And this is Accusative. You have to have a case but you have no special content to communicate. Sure, this isn’t exactly linguistically sound but if you want to spare yourself delving too deep into grammatical functions and definitions it works just fine.
So… Accusative is the way to go for all those basic verbs that have a direct object in English. And other than not being Nominative it doesn’t convey much real meaning.
- I see/hear/buy/write/want/have/love/eat/count/send/get… something or someone.
- Ich sehe/höre/schreibe/will/habe/liebe/esse/zähle/schicke/bekomme… etwas oder jemanden.
Now… does that always work?
Of course it doesn’t. There are in total about 50 verbs for which it doesn’t work. Not too bad I’d say. You could just learn those and use Accusative for the rest. But let’s take a look at Dative first before we get to the exceptions.
As of now we’ll go with this: Accusative doesn’t mean much and is just pure grammar and we use it whenever we have a sentences based on this pattern.
- I “verb” something (+preposition stuff).
- Ich “verbe” etwas (+ prep stuff).
Dative
Now, Accusative has been quite a disappointment. There is no deeper secret to it, no catchy idea. This is different for Dative and to find that out it makes sense to look at another basic pattern for sentences. We already had:
- I “verb”.
which needs no case, and
- I “verb” something.
which usually uses Accusative. The third one is
- I “verb” something to someone.
or better yet, the rephrased version
- I verb someone something.
Many verbs come to mind that fit this pattern… to give, to explain, to say... and the underlying idea is a transfer. Not transfer as in I move somewhere but something is being moved from one entity to another entity.
And whenever we are looking at a situation like this, in German the thing being transferred is in Accusative and the receiver is in Dative.
- Ich gebe dir ein Buch.
- I send you a book.
- Er schickt mir eine Mail.
- He sends me an email.
- Ich sage ihr meinen Namen.
- I tell her my name.
Note that in English both entities, the item being transferred and the receiver are just in objective case. What matters are the roles. And Dative is the receiver. That is its core. Receiving something. Dative receives. That’s also the name of a famous Goethe poem (he wrote it when he was a student of German as a Native language)
Dative receives.
Every Day,
Margarete.
Every day
Dative… I get it.
So nice.
Now, of course there doesn’t have to be a physical object or an abstract object like a name. We can also transfer pieces of information… so there is not always a direct object there.
- Ich sage dir, wie es mir geht.
- I tell you how I am.
Now, this transfer scenario is actually very broad and we have to take it as an abstract concept rather than a literal one if we want it to help us.
For one thing, it can also be used for kind of negative transfers.
- Ich klaue dir einen Stift.
- I steal a pen from you.
In a way, the “receiver” receives -1 pen here, if that helps :). And to give you a more abstract example…
- Ich glaube dir etwas.
- I believe you something (lit)
It might be hard to see a transfer here, but if you say “I am buying that from you” it becomes clear :). I take that from you as truth.
But there doesn’t even have to be a actual transfer going on…
- Ich garantiere dir etwas.
- I guarantee you something.
- Ich lese dir etwas vor.
- I read something out to you.
- Ich präsentiere dir mein neues Fahrrad.
- I present my new bike to you.
The Dative isn’t really receiving a thing here… it is more like an audience for something. But still I think the idea of transfer shines through. By the way… this idea of being and receiving-audience nicely explains a few very common uses of Dative without the Accusative. For example
- Mir ist kalt.
You are not cold yourself as in a cold person. You’re an audience to your environment and you perceive it as cold. You “receive” cold in a very very abstract way… and receive, perceive… there definitely ceive involved :). And there are more examples.
- Mir ist heute etwas lustiges passiert.
- Today, something funny happened to me.
- Berlin gefällt mir.
- I like Berlin (Berlin is pleasing to me as an audience)
- Mir scheint, als ob es bald regnet.
- To me it seems as if it is going to rain soon.
- Ist dir meine neue Frisur aufgefallen?
- Has my new hairdo made an impression on you (kind of lit.)
- Have you noticed my new hair do?
So… this is the basic idea of Dative… it is marks the receiver or audience of something.
Now, I am sure quite a few have been silently asking themselves “So mir is like to me… why doesn’t he just say that.”Well, that is not wrong… if you use that to help you remember Dative that’s fine. But Dative can also express for you and from you and even more importantly, not every to you is automatically a dir.
- I have to talk to you.
- Ich muss dir reden…. WRONG
- Ich muss mit dir reden.
- I come to you.
- Ich komme dir…. WRONG super WRONG
- Ich komme zu dir.
Simply translation to someone as Dative will help you nothing. Dative marks the receiver of in a (possibly abstract) transfer: Someone gives/shows someone something. That is just not the case for those verbs. I can “tell you something” but I can’t “talk you something” just as I can’t “come you something”.
All right.
That was a lot of talking and I have already forgotten half of it and counting. So let’s maybe try and condense this down into a few easy to follow guidelines and then list the exceptions :)
Cases – a rough guide and exceptions.
We can boil down our findings as follows. The Accusative is the next best case besides Nominative. It means nothing and it works for this pattern:
- I “verb” something or someone (+ all kinds of preposition stuff).
This covers many of our basic activities like seeing, eating, reading and so on…. and there are only about 50 exceptions in total. Hooray… so we could also say: just use Accusative if you have no reason to use something else.
Whenever your verb wants, accepts or has 2 objects one will be Accusative and one will be Dative. And with a little fantasy we’ll find that we’re usually looking at some kind of transfer.
- I “verb” you (Dat.) something (Acc.).
And, since it is a common source of confusion… of course you can also be the receiver yourself.
- I “verb”myself something.
That ought to help you pick the correct cases for verbs that look like this in the dictionary
- sich etwas “verben”
Being a receiver or audience is also the main idea of the Dative. That’s what the case expresses even if you see it outside of this transfer-structure.
And sadly… there are exceptions to all of that. One really big and mean one is the verb fragen. It has 2 objects, it fits the pattern “I verb you something, there is even kind of a negative transfer going on and yet.. it is double Accusative.
- Ich frage dich etwas.
This is a really really huge exception. There are close to NO situations in which you’ll see a double Accusative. It is always one Dative, one Accusative…r except for fragen. Don’t ask me why.
And then there is the rule that something in “I verb something.”needs Accusative. It does. For many basic every day verbs. But there are verb that you can’t fully understand. Some verbs just aren’t looking for anything logical, like rules. They can’t be predicted, explained or negotiated with. Some verbs just want to watch the world learn…
- I trust you.
- Ich vertraue dir.
It is totally understandable if someone chooses Accusative. You is the direct object, it is the only object in the sentence, it fits the “I verb someone”-pattern, there is no one receiving anything. And still it is Dative.Is it annoying? Certainly. Does it make sense? No.
- I need your help.
- Ich bedarf deiner Hilfe. (rare)
- Ich brauche deine Hilfe.
The second example is even better because it shows that content has NOTHING to do with the case sometimes. Both verbs mean the same, heck 99% percent of all be-verbs take Accusative in German and yet, it is Genitive. There is no reason why bedürfen wants Genitive and brauchen wants Accusative.
And those are verbs you’ll just have to accept. You don’t have to sit down and learn them all. Just pick them up along the way, like beautiful flowers… or like stinking piles of dog poo. The way you look at it will be the way it feels :)
And I think that’s it. That was my attempt at an explanation for the two German cases that cause most of the problems. The Accusative means nothing, it’s pure function and the Dative marks a receiver. That and the two sentence patterns, and you should be able to get about 80% of all case picks correct… which will help you very little because you also need to know the gender, but hey. Who cares. Getting a case wrong is not that big of a deal after all and people will always understand you. So take your time. It’ll grow on you like the hair on my should… wait … too much information.
I want to add an exercise here at some point but I don’t have enough time at the moment. So if anyone knows a good quiz online… please share. And if you have any other questions (which I am sure you have) or if you’re like “What? That’s it? That’s your explanation? I didn not learn a single new Thing you fraud” as always just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
I’m lucky that my mother tongue has dative that is very similar to the German one. I dunno what I would do otherwise, but I can imagine how frustrating this must be for native English speakers:-)
Just out of curiosity… considering that Russian does know Gender and has more cases and more noun inflections than German… is there anything particularly hard about German for a Russian Native speaker ? Like… something that really makes people go like “Ugh.. German is a pain in the ass because of THIS?” :)
1. Gender. Just because we have it doesn’t make it any easier, because there is no correspondence between the two systems whatsoever. While sometimes in Russian one simply has to know the gender, most of the time (like in 98% of cases) it can be determined from the pair “meaning + ending”. Not so in German. This especially concerns those ancient 1/2-syllable everyday language words. (This sorta applies to plural forms too, but they are much, much easier, even with all the irregularities.)
2. Certain prepositions and prefixes. The level of correspondence is actually quite great, which helps quite a bit, but one gets lost between auf/an/in etc. sometimes. I could add the use of vectors “hin” and “her” here. We don’t have them, and though their meaning is clear, their usage is not quite trivial.
3. The way the complex words are built, namely, the unwritten rules, such as whether to add -s- or -en- or not, where to cut off the word stems, what form of word to use etc.
Those are only my difficulties of course. Maybe someone has trouble with the adjective declination system, which I find trivial (you should see ours hehe)…
Meh… so mostly the things you just have to learn :D… that doesn’t sound so bad after all. By the way… do you know anything about Polish? I have heard that it is one of the most sophisticated and difficult languages in Europe (really complex grammar and pronunciation)
“so mostly the things you just have to learn :D”
Which doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. I don’t have that much storage space in my brain!
(But at least I’m not learning Chinese or Japanese. Phewww…!)
I can read Polish texts (not with complete, but with sufficient level of understanding) because Polish is closely related to Russian. To me it feels like reading an ancient Slavic text.
There are some very interesting connections between Polish and Old Russian. Like, take the Polish word “sąd” (court of law). Now, I know from experience that whenever I meet “ą” or “ę” I need to mentally substitute them either with “u” or with “ya”. So I go with “syad” … nope, doesn’t work. “Sud”? Here we have it – “court of law” in Russian. And so on. That’s because in the old Slavic protolanguage these words were written with special letters that evolved into our u/i and into their ą/ę. Of course, there are also things like “blęd”. Both “blyad” and “blud” give words that exist in Russian (the first is an expletive, the second means fornication) but they don’t correspond to the Polish meaning, “mistake”, “error”. But if one knows a bit about the old Russian language, one knows that both “blyad” and “blud” stem from the root word that used to mean “mistake”, “deviation” and acquired those sexual connotations only quite late. So knowing a bit of old Russian helps. As does knowing English and German, because quite a lot of words come from these languages too (or at least can be guessed easily if you know these languages).
Now, understanding spoken Polish is something that needs to be trained separately – I can’t understand it. The reason is that it sounds very different from Russian. “Sąd”, for example is not pronounced as [sahd]. It’s pronounced more as [sond], with a nasal vowel. ę is also nasal, something like [en]. That’s why Lech Wałęsa is written in Russian as Лех Валенса – “Lekh Walensa”.
Worst would be for a Chinese person like my maternal side. Chinese has absolutely no cases, tenses, conjugations, gender, plurals, articles,
root changes, etc. Completely reliant on word order, helping words, particles, and good ole context.
Same with Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese, Hawaiian, or any ultra-mega-analytic language. Direct English is heading in several centuries hence.
Don’t be mistaken, they have there own way; I even read a guy who said “Chinesisch hat keine grammatik.” Very wrong.
Oh yes, compared to those languages English, German and even French to an extend are just dialects :). It’s just so different. And you’re right… of course Chinese has grammar. I might actually have said myself once “If you want no grammar then learn Chinese” but all languages have grammar because that’s just a guide to how to arrange things. Chinese just doesn’t have many of the “standard” things… or better, the things someone from Europe or America takes for granted… like having a past tense form of the verb or something. But Chinese has other things… one thing I’ve read on Wikipedia was the “complement of result” where it marks “absolute” vs. “possible”. … oh my… I really wish I could speak a language that is sooo different but I don’t have the energy to sit down and learn it. I think they should make German kids learn an Asian language (like Chinese Han) or Hindi as a third language beside English instead of French or Italian… something that really broadens the horizon and even if you don’t become fluent at least you learn that anything goes when it comes to languages :)
Hindi is actually Indo-European, so it’s really no more distant from German than Russian or Greek are. Just because it’s written in a different script it doesn’t mean it’s that different a language; Yiddish is written with Hebrew letters and yet I reckon a German speaker could actually understand Yiddish being spoken!
It really all goes back to the Proto-Indo-European language. Germanic languages (e.g. German, English), Romance languages (e.g. French, Latin), Slavic languages (e.g. Russian), Celtic languages (e.g. Irish), Hellenic languages (e.g. Greek), Indic languages (e.g. Hindi), Iranian languages (e.g. Persian)… they are all descendants of the PIE. That’s why, despite their differences, they all share many fundamental grammatical features, these “standard” things you mentioned, that people don’t even realise some languages don’t have until they learn a non-Indo-European language. And like Grateful Reader was saying, often you can pick up “trends” for what sound in one language corresponds to what sound in another related language.
One trend I’ve noticed is that when you go from English to German: th –> d , d –> t and t –> ss/z
For instance:
think –> denken
door –> Tür
two –> zwei
eat –> essen
Once you pick up a trend, it becomes so much easier to pick up cognates and guess what a word might mean! But of course, you have to remember that just because it’s cognate, the meaning doesn’t have to be the same!
:)
Haha… you’re totally right and I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote “or Hindi”. :D… also the trend-thing is true and can be a huge help. For instance Swedish is really really twisted for my ears and I can’t understand anything despite it being a Germanic languages. And the reason is that I don’t know which sound corresponds to which. I’m sure if I sat down for a day and made an effort things would become much clearer :).
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift
Thats a good trend you picked up! It appears for all the plosive stops (p/b, t/d, k/g).
P becomes pf word initially or syllable final (sometimes) and ff intervocalically or finally. Pfeffer and Schiff are good examples.
T becomes ts or ss.
K became kch in Bavarian but stayed k in initial positions in german, turned into ch internal or finally.
B d and g became voiceless (p t and k)
And english took some b and ds and made them v, and th (g was unaffected). Eg feder, feather, gab, gave, vater, father, haben, have.
Basically voiceless stops became affricates or fricatives, voiced went voiceless, english made intervocalic voiced stops fricatives, sometimes. If you want the linguistical jargon. ;)
Btw Emanuel have you herd of der akkusativ des inhalts? Jemanden eine frage fragen is in fact not double accusative! It makes tons of sense.
Akkusative des Inhalts… hmmm never heard of that concept and while I usually tend to just write what I think the rules are in this case I have support from a 1300 page grammar reference book (Duden) :). But as always with language and linguistics a lot depends on how we look at things, so maybe it does make sense… do you have some source for that? I’d like to check it out … thanks for the trends by the way :D
Duden by no means wrong when it comes to getting German right, but I think some of its functional analyses are a little off, especially in this case.
Akkusativ des Inhalts is no more a direct object Akkusativ than the time. “Den ganzen Tag” or whatever. It talks about the verb, it’s a particle-style addition in the accusative case. Although most of them don’t display the accusative directly, there are some well established example where you can in fact see it quite clearly.
Eine Sprache/Deutsch/kein Wort/einen Eid sprechen
Eine Frage fragen
Deutsch/Englisch unterrichten (Sie unterrichtete Deutsch.)
Schlange/Schmiere(/Spalier?) stehen
(Motor)Rad fahren
Korrektur lesen
usw.
These are all additions to the content of the verb, and are in no way the direct object. They expand the definition and are in that case an adverbial.
There’s more about it here and also an answer to the question of whether or not in this case languages should be großgeschrieben if it is considered an adverbial.
http://www.belleslettres.eu/artikel/deutsch-sprechen_auf-deutsch.php
So finally I have gotten around to watching the video :). Now I understand what you mean. I have a few gripes with the video though and since there is no discussion possible over there, I’ll just do it here. I’ll be lengthy ;).
first of all, he says that “sprechen” can’t take a direct object. That is not 100% correct.
Ich spreche dir [meine Telefonnummer or whatever else – direct object] auf Band/die Mailbox.
He also says that “fahren” cannot take a direct object… this is wrong this time
Ich fahre einen BMW.
Ich fahre meinen Bruder nach Dresden.
Maybe the first example can be considered not a direct object. You can find “Was fährst du?” a lot online but in rather colloquial places. Anyway, I really strongly believe that the second sentence does have a direct object
Wen fährst du?
This question does exist on its own.
Thirdly, he says that all his examples of nouns being directly connected to “sprechen” are acts of speech. Well, what about
Er spricht die Wharheit.
This is common enough to mention it. I can see that it is an Inhaltsakkusativ but to me it is not a Sprechakt.
Also, I have to disagree with his suggesting that the answer to
“Wie fährst du?”
is
“Rad.”
that sounds just as wrong to me as
“Was fährst du?”
“Rad”
Other than that I found this whole concept of Inhaltsakkusative interesting. (the Duden in fact mentions it and calls it predicate accusative… they give the example “nennen”).
It shows very nicely how there is a gradual change from this to a direct object. Verbs and their closest complements have different degrees of closeness. We start with the non-separable prefixes, then get to the separable ones, then there are the ones where people always think whether to write it as one word or as two
zurückkommen/zurück kommen
Then we get to the very close connections of verbs and nouns
Rad fahren/Klavier spielen/Spaß machen
then we gradually get into direct object territory starting with phrasings that resemble the above elemnt by element
Wein trinken ( no one would write weintrinken)
and then we end up at the direct objects.
There is a lot of blur and interpretation and that is why there are so many spelling issues. I don’t know the rules and neither do I care. I write how I feel in that particular regard. And I doubt many people even notice.
But now back to the actual topic… is “eine Frage fragen” a predicate accusative. I would say no because you can basically insert the pronoun “das”
Ich habe dich das schon oft gefragt.
“Das” can stand for anything, any question so it is by no means as restricted a situation as with “Sprache sprechen”. But while that can be argued against, I think the fact GratefullReader already mentioned that we ask
Was fragst du ihn?
makes it clear that we are dealing with a double accusative when we look at the verb “fragen”.
And now I am curious… did that convince you :)?
I feel like I should make an addition to my long comment…
so the Duden says that “Lügner” in
Sie nennen ihn einen Lügner
is a predicate Accusative, while it states that “fragen” takes two accusative objects.
I said, that the fact that we can ask “was” proves this right.
Was frage ich dich? Etwas [direct object].
Now… would it be possible to ask
Was nenne ich dich?
The answer is that I am uncertain but the important thing is that we can replace the predicate acc. with the generic modal stand in “so”
Du nennst ihn deinen Hasen?
Ja, so nenne ich ihn.
Here we clearly and indisputably see that “deinen Hasen” is not an object but rather an adverbial of “how?”. This doesn’t work for “fragen”
Du fragst mich, wie alt ich bin?
Ja, ich frage dich so.
Nope. That might work in English (not sure) but in German this is just wrong.
“Jemanden eine frage fragen is in fact not double accusative!”
Ich glaube, es ist ganz offensichtlich, dass es sich hier um den Doppelakkusativ handelt.
Erstens: wenn wir “es/das/Frage” betrachten, sind wir in der Lage, eine Frage zu formulieren. Das ist wichtig, weil z.B. es sich bei “Rad fahren” überhaupt um kein Substantiv handelt, da “Rad” ein Bestandteil des Verbes ist. Deshalb darf man nicht fragen: “Was fahre ich?”. Man darf aber fragen: “Was fragen wir?”.
Zweitens: es ist einfach zu sehen, dass wir so was wie “wie fragen wir” (oder Ähnliches) nicht fragen können. Nur “was”. Deshalb geht es um kein Adverb (oder Adverbiale, oder was auch immer). Ergo: der Doppelakkusativ.
Also zunächst mal bin ich im Grundsatz bei dir. Ich sehe hier auch einen Doppelakkusativ. Dein erstes Argument ist auch sehr gut… wobei es bei spielen zu wanken beginnt.
Was spielst du? Klavier oder Posaune?
Laut der Quelle (Belle Lettre) sind dies auch solche Inhaltsakkusative.
Was das zweite Argument angeht…. grundsätzlich kann für jedes Verb “wie” fragen.
“Wie fragst du? ”
“Ich frage freundlich.”
Meinst du, dass ich nicht “wie” fragen und “eine Frage” antworten kann? Das ist (zumindest) für mich bei Fahrrad nicht anders.
“Wie fährst du?”
“Fahrrad”
Das funktioniert für mich nicht und ich wäre verwirrt.
“Also zunächst mal bin ich im Grundsatz bei dir. Ich sehe hier auch einen Doppelakkusativ. Dein erstes Argument ist auch sehr gut… wobei es bei spielen zu wanken beginnt.
Was spielst du? Klavier oder Posaune?”
Aber im Gegensatz zu “Rad fahren” sind das keine eigenständigen Verben oder? Es geht bei denen also um den Verbund “Verb + Nomen”, während es bei “Rad fahren” um ein einzelnes Verb geht.
Ich habe keine Ahnung, wo genau zwischen solchen Fällen die Grenze liegt, aber es ist nur halt so.
“Laut der Quelle (Belle Lettre) sind dies auch solche Inhaltsakkusative.”
Es kann sein, dass sie, abhänging vom Zusammenhang, die beiden Funktionen ausüben.
Auch wenn nicht, bedeutet das nur, dass man durch die Fragestellung nicht immer zwischen Arten Akkusativ unterscheiden könnte. In unserem Fall (bei “fragen”) ist das Ergebnis trotzdem eindeutig.
“grundsätzlich kann für jedes Verb “wie” fragen.
“Wie fragst du? ”
“Ich frage freundlich.””
Sicher. “Freundlich” ist aber weder ein Nomen, noch ein Pronomen (d.h. was wir besprechen) ;)
“Meinst du, dass ich nicht “wie” fragen und “eine Frage” antworten kann?”
Bingo!
Hahha yeah. Daniel, the author of Belles Lettres, did say he has no discussion section for some reason along the lines of “You should reflect on it on your own in some quiet time” or something. xD
Yes, you did convince me. I think his point in the end may have been the transition from Predicate Accusative to Direct Object is what happens sometimes. He does, though, seem to live a little in the past when it comes to his critique, but he’s fully aware of the change of language, as a linguist. I think that because the site is directed towards writing novels and language interest, to a somewhat lesser extent, he caters to that audience.
I do really like the site though, the videos are great for a budding linguist slash person who is learning the language. Also, I do agree with you about the writing, too. No one really seems to notice so I just go with the flow as far as Getrennt- and Zusammenschreibung goes, and Groß- and Kleinschreibung. Few people notice and the boundaries are ridiculous, he points out how it’s a little silly in the video. Namely the capitalisation of the infinitives and so forth.
Regardless, hope you had a great Christmas and all best for the new year, Emanuel!
Oh, forgot to mention, about bedürfen, it actually makes sense that its object could be in the genitive case if you think of it as “to be in need [of]”. Because you are in need OF something. English makes this construction with “of”. Same with French: “avoir besoin de X” = “to have need of X”.
And speaking of dialects, I’m reminded of the Yiddish quote:
“אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט”
(a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot)
in other words, “Eine Sprache ist ein Dialekt mit einer Armee und Flotte”
^_^
This quote is great :D… as for “bedürfen”, yes, that does make sense indeed. It is still weird since the “be-” prefix really usually creates a direct object… and then there is “Bedarf haben nach/für” and not “von”… oh this must be sooo frustrating :)
That was me above, sorry :-P
Guten Tag Emmanuel, vielen Dank for this post. A common and mehrwertig Wort in german is leisten. Es würde very nice if you could write a post about it. Lucius
Das ist ein super Wort und ich hatte es absolut nicht auf dem Schirm, wie man so sagt :)… mach’ ich im Januar. Danke für den Tip!!
Hey,
I saw in some of your posts that you’re writing about “spoken past”… it’s just another tense (“Perfekt”).
You’re using the “Perfekt” tense very often. :D
I don’t know if you ever post an explanation about all German tenses with examples.
You could/should do it. :D
The tenses are:
– Gegenwart
– Vergangenheit
– Perfekt
– Plusquamperfekt
– Futur 1
– Futur 2
Yeah… I call the “Perfekt” spoken past so as to not have English speakers confuse it with their present perfect. There is an overlap but the use is different enough to keep them apart… anyway… I will cover all of them at some point but especially Futur 2 will probably take another year or so :)
What about them ultra perfekts? When I was young I thought they were possible but they weren’t but they may be possible in German as I have heard.
Do you mean things like this:
This would be double perfect I guess :). These are fully “grammaticalized”, meaning that there is a standard way to build all kinds of derivatives from it and it is important enough to be described in systematic grammar books. It occurs mostly in spoken though. And then there is also the double past perfect.
Again, this is mostly used in spoken German but you can sometimes find them in novels too (when the author tries to make them sound “spoken”) Here’s an example by winners of the Nobel price for literature Günther Grass:
Anyway, those are not forms a student need to learn. No test will ever ask for them and if someone used them, I think it would be considered a mistake. But for those who like to play around and build some clusters of verbs, they are great :)
Oh my gosh, I have been studying German in school for nearly 2 1/2 years and this is the first time I really understand the cases. I mean, I have an AMAZING German teacher (he’s an awesome guy and great at teaching) but the way he taught the cases didn’t totally make sense to me. I kind of understood it, but not enough to really understand when to use what case. Aside from the exceptions (because of course all languages feel the need to throw in unnecessary exceptions), I feel a lot more confident in knowing which case to use when.
Thank you!!
I think a lot of people have made the same experience… even when the were fluent already they felt like they kind of knew the cases but there was still something missing… so it’s really great and rewarding to hear that I could close at least a part of that gap :)
Happy Neues Jahr! :)
Thank you for the both useful and amusing explanations! I’ve studied German for 10 years, aber habe die Scprache sehr gut vergessen. Now i’m in a process of recollecting knowledge, and this here is a wonderful start fro these ‘basics’. Vielen Dank!
As for the language comparisons, i’m a Bulgarian – my language has all the grammatical package – tenses, genders, plurals, prepositions, conjugations, cases, word/sentence order… However, most Bulgarians (not me) find German grammar an impossible disaster. I guess it’s because In our language the cases for example are there, but they almost do not affect the other words, much like in English.
“Impossible disaster”… that made me laugh :D.
This has been enlightening! Thanks a lot for explaining it all so clear.
You say that it doesn’t make sense using Dative in “Ich vertraue dir” (I trust you), but I think it does because a transfer is implied. Although not mentioned, “trust” is transferred from me to you, sort of. “I trust you” might also mean “I give you my trust”. That’s how I see it anyway :)
Did I really write that?! Hahha… looks like I did. You’re totally right … the transfer-logic clearly works and that’s how I see it too. Works for many of the Dative-only verbs :)
I think I just used that example simply because the verb has a direct object in English and follows that simple “I verb someone” pattern but still isn’t Accusative.
Having spoken Afrikaans since I was a wee lad, I find a lot of German grammar relatively simple since the principles are often similar or the same between Afrikaans and German. Like “Mir” is similar to the Afrikaans “Met”.
“I trust you” may not make dative sense in a English, but in Spanish it is ” yo confio en ti”; lit, it’d be “i trust in (towards) you” . that way it makes perfect sense. I’m realizing that it seems to be easier to understand many conflictive German grammar stuff from the Spanish perspective, whereas English seems to introduce nothing but confusion. Is a shame this blog is not in Spanish :(
I have good news… it actually is :). And this is no joke.
Someone recently offered to translate everything into Spanish. He just started a few wees ago and there isn’t that much there yet but he’s going at a really good pace. You should definitely head over and leave him a comment.
https://tualemandiario.wordpress.com/
This is awesome! thanks!
Danke :)
Hi, I have been researching for good material for my students and I came across this post (including part 1)
Just a quick comment for your information. English still has 3 cases and they are used frequently.
1. Nominative case (in modern English also called Subjective case)
2. Possessive case (would equal the German Genitive case, but easier) eg: I like my mum’s car. (mum= Nom, but mum’s=Pos.)
3. Objective case (made up from dative and accusative case = direct and indirect object) both DO and IO formation is the same and modern English has summarised this in the Objective case, there are however still 2 cases (dative & accusative) within the Objective case.
Here you go, German and English are very similar. If you can take apart a sentence in English as well as in German, cases are not problem at all and the only problem left is the learning the endings and adjustments.
You also referred to the “Erfragung des Falles” using questions like Wer? oder Was?, Wem?… I fully agree that this is no way helpful to a basic or intermediate learner, however advanced students should learn, know and use this method in order to pass exams.
Anyway, as I said… just a quick note which you might find interesting.
NB: I’m a teacher of English (ESL) and German (DaF) (native in both languages) :-)
Cool, thanks für diese little overview! Und glad zu sehen, dass teacher here auch reinreaden :)
I think you may have just saved my degree. Thank you!
Oh wow… I’ll have my fingers crossed then :). Let me know how it went.
Good explanation – one question, though: Why do you limit Dativ to the notion of receiving? It seems to me that if you broadened it to the notion of transfering, you can incorporate pretty much all of your examples without having to jump through hoops of “negative transfers” and the like.
And one quibble with the notion of negative transfer: I don’t think “Ich klaue Dir einen Stift.” is a good example. This sentence is ambiguous in German – it can both mean I steal a pen from you, as well as for you. Arguably, the “actual” meaning is “I steal a pen for you”, while the “I steal from you”-sense being is the colloquial version that ommitted the clarifying “von”.
Oh wow, that double meaning didn’t even occur to me :). So I guess this would be better:
– Ich nehme dir deinen Stift weg.
One thing though… “Ich klaue dir” in sense of “I take from you” is not colloquial, nor has a “von” be omitted. It’s an integral part of the Dative. If you take the sentence
– Sie hat mir mein Herz gestohlen.
it’s hard to imagine that with “von”. It would sound clunky and also, it would open up the possibility of the heart just being A heart, not the one of the person it was stolen from.
The thing with “transfer” is that “transfer” is too broad a word. A transfer includes 3 roles: someones transfers something to someone. The Dative is just one of those roles. I can’t think of another word than receiver.. any ideas ?
Why is it too broad? Wouldn’t that only be problematic if it coincided with (at least parts of) the notion of one of the other cases? Yet if Nominative is “the default”, Accusative is “much grammatical smoke for little semantical fire”, Genitive “that possessive thingy”, then Dativ as “indicating a transfer of some sort” doesn’t seem to be overlapping with any of these in any significant way. I don’t quite see how “Ich sage Dir etwas.” or “Ich schreibe Dir einen Brief.” carries the notion of receiving more pronounced than the notion of transferring. In the latter example, it is not even implied that you ever receive the letter?
I see where you’re going at but how would you phrase it then? If I say “Dative marks/implies transfer” then people are totally gonna use Dative for stuff that is part of a transfer… but the thing being transferred is NOT Dative. So I’d have to say “Dative is for transfer and it is NOT for the item transferred”… I don’t know … receiver just seems much shorter.
How would you use “transfer” to explain Dative in one sentence?
As an aside: Entwenden would be a better verb for that Klauen-example. “Ich entwende Dir einen Stift” is unambiguous.
And also leaving aside sentences such as “Ich überweise Dich an den Facharzt”, which seem to fit the pattern but requires Akkusative…
You pretty much phrased it similar to how I’d do it: “Dative is used to indicate the process of transferring someone/something … to/from someone/something”. Conceptually, it’s kind of convenient that you’re emphasizing the fact that verbs do, in fact, denote processes, whereas the receiver-solution tries to explain the usage of certain verbs by reference to objects (the receivers).
So “Ich entwende Dir die Freundin.” Entwenden indicates a process of transfer of some sort to/from someone; that relation is indicated by Dative. The thing being transferred can’t stand in Nominative (since it’s not the Subject), hence it stands in “the next best thing”, which is Accusative.
But just by itself “Dative is used to indicate the process of …” does not tell us what object gets the Dative. Is it the direct object, the indirect object or both? Sounds silly if you know the answer but if you don’t then that’s missing. So how would you include that?
Put crudely, that object gets the Dative that is needed to establish the process as one of transferring and clarify its direction. So keeping with the example of stealing: “Ich stehle Dir den Stift.”, it is not the pen that indicates that something is being transferred, nor the direction of the transfer. You could substitute “Gute Laune” (a state of affairs) for Stift (an object) without any changes to the grammar: “Die Vorstellung stielt/raubt Dir die gute Laune”. That stehlen/rauben establish a relation between Ich and Du (Dir), however, do establish the transfer. So those get Nominative and Dative, respectively, the pen/the gute Laune, as the object being transferred, get the Akkusative.
Yeah but that’s not really short, is it ;)? Also, it does not as you claim indicate the direction.
– Dative marks a receiver. The receiver can receive or be taken from.
Can you give me something that short with just using the wording transfer?
Also… just to make sure… I think I didn’t in any way indicate that the direct object (pen, etc) would indicate the transfer. If I did write that point me to it and I’ll change it.
I like your explanation with “receiver”, I find it pretty intuitive. Though people do think differently, so sometimes prefer different kinds of explanations, and I think I can see the point of the comments about focus on the process of transferring, and the thing that is integral to the transfer … but to me this is a less intuitive way of understanding it.
We all understand the role of the receiver at a fundamental level, and I don’t think it’s too much of a jump to say that you can, by analogy, receive “in reverse”. There are even jokes along these lines, like in “Red Dwarf” when they’re in the alternate reality where time flows backwards, so Santa is “the big fat git who sneaks down chimneys and steals all the kids’ favourite toys!”
I don’t think Albrecht is suggesting that you said that the direct object is indicating the transfer – I think he’s just making a general comment that it doesn’t (in fact, can’t) – as opposed to the dative, which does. :)
You’ve lost me I’m afraid way over my head. Why not write a fairly long paragraph and highlight the words within the paragraph in black that are cases.
Then write the same.paragraph again only this time highlight the cases in their various colours.
Would this help me identify what cases actually are and what the verb does to them and would patterns appear in the paragraph ?
Many thanks.
Wait, I’m confused… do you want a paragraph in German with all the words that are in some case marked in black and then the same paragraph, this time with color coded cases? That would mean that I mark ALL pronouns and ALL nouns because you cannot have an entity (thing, person) that is NOT in a case. Did I understand you correctly?
Or what are the comparisons ?
Ich vertraue dir in the text is dative.
What would it look like if it was accusitive so that I can get my head around the difference ?
The “dir” is Dative. If it were accusative it would be “dich”
– ich vertraue dich.
But that would be wrong then, simply because the verb doesn’t want it that way, so to speak (no logic here).Do want a table with all the different forms for “ich” and “du” and so on?
Ah, Wiki hepled me out…
The Case is the THE part of the noun and it changes depending on what is being said
der Seemann (nominative) “the sailor” [as a subject] (e.g. Der Seemann steht da – the sailor is standing there)
den Seemann (accusative) “the sailor” [as a direct object] (e.g. Ich sah den Seemann” – I saw the sailor)
des Seemannes (genitive) “the sailor’s / [of] the sailor” (e.g. Der Name des Seemannes ist Otto – the sailor’s name is Otto)
dem Seemann(e) (dative) “[to/for] the sailor” [as an indirect object] (e.g. Ich gab dem Seemann ein Geschenk – I gave a present to the sailor)
Is it always der, den, des and dem when the nominative is der ? What would the accusitive,genetive and dative of the nominative Das boot change to for example ?
Also do the pronouns change ?
I, me, mine, myself, she, her, hers,he,him,his herself, we, us, ours and ourselves. What would these change to.
So Ich vertraue dir could have been misinterpreted as ich vertraue dich, du, ihr, euch, Sie or Ihnen ?
Am I getting a better understanding of it ?
Many Thanks.
Think of it this way… every word that stand for an entity (thing or person) has four dresses in its drawer…. one for each case. Depending on what the word’s job is in a sentence it will pick the dress. Nouns are lazy and usually use the same dress for all cases (NOT always). But the short words (articles like der, das and die or pronouns like I, you, he ….) have 4 different dresses.
– Ich, mich, mir, meiner (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive)
– das, das, dem, des (same order)
….
As for
– ich vertraue dir…
The verb says “I want to see my object dress up as a Dative… because that’s how I roll”. And so the person “you” puts on the Dative dress (dir). You can use other dresses but then the word would show up inappropriately dressed. It wouldn’t fit in.
Hope that helped clear it up a bit further. Let me know, if you have more questions.
Btw… did you read the article “What the heck are cases”? That’s a general discussion of the concept of cases and I think it might be helpful.
Hi,
Thank you again for such a wonderful explanation. But I would like to criticize that compared to your other blogs, I would say this one does not live up to the expectation. I hope you take this in a positive sense.
Also I have a question regarding double accusative.
I understood the verb fragen takes double accusative. What about the verb stellen? I am confused in following two examples
1. Der Stift liegt auf dem Tisch.
2. Ich stelle den Stift auf den Tisch.
I understand why the Tisch in 1st sentence is in dativ
I understand that Stift should be in accusative in the second sentence because action is being performed on the Stift. But why the Tisch is not in dativ case but in accusative? Does stellen also take double accusativ?
Thanks for the feedback :). I have to ask though… could you tell me what exactly it is, that made it fall short? Is it the writing? Or the explanation? I’m just asking because maybe I can improve it.
As for your question:
When it comes to cases, there are two completely independent sets of rules/grammar:
1) cases for stuff
2) cases for stuff that is connected via preposition
The two worlds have ZERO to do with one another. In fact, trying to find common ground can lead to confusion. The article only talks about the 1st world. You can have a verb that takes one object and then put 10 things into your sentence using various prepositions:
– Ich sehe nach der Arbeit [einen Baum] auf dem Hügel vor dem Haus.
The only thing the stuff we talked about here applies to is “Baum”. For all the others, the case mainly depends on the preposition, and as I said, there are different rules there.
Let me know if that helps.
Hi,
Yes now I understand that when there is preposition, there will be different rules. Will you be writing an article about the prepositions in the future?
About the article on cases: I got bored with the first part “what are cases”. I found the explanation unnecessarily long. And in the next two parts, you explained Accusativ case as if it is not so important and does not mean much, so a beginner would not pay much attention to this case and will not learn it seriously. But I like the Accusativ case and I think it is cannot be spared from learning. Its like hands and legs, you cannot say one is more important than the other. I can say accusativ is like hands, you interact directly with an object using them, and dativ is like legs, you need them to go to the object for doing the interaction.
That’s an interesting feedback.Ignoring accusative would definitely not be a bad take away from the post.
I didn’t mean to say that it’s useless, I just don’t think it has especially much to tell us apart from “this is an object”. Anyway, I’ll reread the article at some point and see if I can make it more clear that you need the accusative.
The hand imagery is nice, by the way.