German help?

Question

What exactly is nominative, dative, accusative, and so on? My German teacher says it a lot; but I kinda forgot what it means. Weißt du?

Answer 1

Nominative is the subject, or a noun or pronoun that's the same thing/person as the subject. (ie Ich bin ein Mann--ich is the subject but "ein Mann" is the same thing as the subject.)
(der, die, das)

Accusative is the direct object. Ich siehe den Mann. "Den Mann" is "what" I see.
(den, die, das)

Dative is the indirect object, like the me in "give me a call"--the beneficiary of the action. But some pronouns also take dative objects. Zu and mit I think always do, and some like "an" only sometimes do. I don't get that bit, but if you look up my questions, I did have it explained once. With plurals, the noun always ends with "n" even if the normal plural doesn't (like "meine Kinder" is nominative but in dative it's "mit meiner Kindern"). Also "to Mr." is "Herrn"
(dem, dem, der)

Genitive is "of" or possessive. I'm not there yet, but I know the masculine is "des" and I think masculine nouns in Genitive have as s at the end.

Answer 2

"so ein Mist!" "so eine Unverschaemtheit!" or like dogtags says: became für ein...? (ein ought to agree in gender and grammatical case, based on the function of the noun interior the sentence): ...became für einen Tisch suchen Sie? ...became für eine Dame ist sie? ...became für ein wunderschönes Haus! zirp · 4 weeks in the past

Answer 3

That's called declension cases.