The German Cases — Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ, Genitiv

Deutsch Üben · free practice, no account needed

German marks what a noun is doing in a sentence by changing the article in front of it. English does this only with pronouns — he versus him — while German does it with every noun. There are four cases, and the article shifts in each.

The four cases

The article table

Everything in this topic rests on one table. It is worth learning by heart, and it is smaller than it looks — many of the cells repeat.

Where the case comes from

Three things decide the case, and knowing which one is in play is most of the skill.

1. The verb

Most verbs take a direct object in the accusative: Ich trinke den Kaffee. But a specific group takes the dative instead, and these have to be learned as a list because nothing about them looks different:

helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören, antworten, folgen, passen, schmecken, gratulieren, vertrauen, widersprechen.

Ich helfe dem Mann — not den. The verb decides.

2. A fixed preposition

Some prepositions always force the same case, whatever the meaning.

These are worth drilling until they are automatic. mit is always dative; there is nothing to think about.

3. A two-way preposition

Nine prepositions take either case, and the choice carries meaning. This is the part learners find hardest, and the rule is genuinely simple once stated:

The nine: an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen.

Ich gehe in die Küche. — I go into the kitchen. Movement, accusative.
Ich bin in der Küche. — I am in the kitchen. Position, dative.

The test is not whether anything is moving in general, but whether the thing is crossing into the place named. Someone can be running hard — ich laufe in dem Park — and still take the dative, because the running happens inside the park rather than into it.

When the verb overrides the rule

At B1 and beyond, some verbs fix the case of their preposition regardless of movement. warten auf always takes the accusative even though nothing moves: Ich warte auf den Bus. Likewise sich freuen auf, denken an, sich erinnern an — all accusative — while bestehen auf, leiden unter and zweifeln an take the dative.

These are learned as verb-plus-preposition pairs, not derived from meaning.

Contractions

Some preposition-article pairs merge, and in writing the merged form is the standard one.

Others — aufs, fürs, durchs — are common in casual writing but optional. A few, like übers and unters, belong to speech only; in writing keep über das.

When to learn what

Genitiv is not part of the A2 syllabus and does not need to be rushed. It appears far less in speech than the other three, and the possessive can usually be expressed with von plus the dative instead.