When I teach German, students often ask me what the accusative and the dative are.

The four German cases

German has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. They indicate the function of nouns in a sentence. The nominative is reserved for the subject of a sentence, the person or thing that specifies how a verb is conjugated. The genitive is the easiest: it denotes possession. In German, the direct object requires the accusative case, and the indirect object requires the dative.

English also has cases, but nouns are no longer declined according to case. Look at this simple sentence: I am making breakfast for my wife’s parents. The subject is I: I am left to do the work. The indirect object is my wife’s parents, the beneficiaries: they are going to eat the breakfast. The direct object is the breakfast: that is what is being made. And the genitive is my wife, because she is the one to whom the parents ‘grammatically’ belong.

The direct object in German

Consider the following example: The dog is biting the man. The dog is the subject (doing the biting), and the man is the direct object; he receives the action of the verb (he is being bitten). Then the man kicks the dog. Here the man is the subject, and the dog is the direct object (he is being kicked). If you replace nouns with pronouns, you can see the accusative case in English: He is biting him. Him being the accusative.

The indirect object in German

The indirect object comes into the equation: The man is going to the shop and buying the dog a bone. The man is the subject, the bone is the direct object (it is being bought), and the dog is the indirect object (he receives the bone). Again, you can see the dative case in English when replacing nouns with pronouns: He is buying him a bone. In this scenario, him is the dative. In modern English, the indirect object is often distinguished by the use of prepositions; for example, He is buying a bone for the dog.

Declension in German

The German language declines not only pronouns but also articles, adjectives and sometimes even nouns.

Let’s look at the above example in German: Der Mann kauft dem Hund einen Knochen.

der Mann = subject, dem Hund = indirect object (dative), einen Knochen = direct object (accusative)

Der Hund is changing to dem Hund, and ein Knochen is changing to einen Knochen.

Replace the nouns with pronouns and the order of the two objects can change: Der Mann kauft ihn dem Hund, and with two pronouns, Er kauft ihn ihm. The rules, with sentences to practise, are on the accusative and dative word order page.

Apart from indicating the function of a noun, cases are also required after prepositions in German.

Think German is complicated? Try learning Russian, with six cases, or Polish, which has seven.

Case endings settle with practice, in one-to-one German lessons in London or German lessons online.