Laura Bennett

If you’re like many of my students, you’ve been using Duolingo, watching YouTube, or learning German through various online tools. You picked up on those little words der, die, das that always come in front of nouns — der Mann, die Frau, das Kind, etc.

But why the difference? Why not just pick one — like our English ‘the’ — and use that?

The answer: all German nouns have gender. Everything from bee to bird to table and chair is either a masculine, feminine, or neuter noun.

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The genitive case in German is a strange phenomenon these days. It’s currently being wiped out of the language… but in the meantime is still used sometimes.

Its weird, on-its-deathbed status means that the genitive is rarely used in common, everyday German; but it is still hanging on by its fingernails in academia and other formal registers.

If you want to be able to say more than “Guten Morgen! Ich möchte ein Brötchen!”, then learning the dative case is essential.

The dative case has a standard, basic function: signaling the indirect object of the sentence. BUT, in German, it has many, many side gigs, too.

If you want to say simple, everyday, might-be-relevant-to-your-life things such as I hurt my leg, I’m feeling cold, That’s important to me, or You can kiss my ***, then you need to learn the dative case.

Learning what the German accusative case is (and how and when to use it) is essential. Since it’s not a grammar topic we really deal with in English, it might seem hard (or even dumb) at first.

But, there is a rhyme & reason to why German has a case system (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) and you are going to learn the crucial ins-and-outs of [the accusative part of] it in this article!