In this unit, in the context of simple sentences that involve all four German cases, you will learn how to:

• Identify the case, number and gender of nouns, pronouns, definite articles, indefinite articles, and question words.
• Identify and translate genitive-case noun chains.
• Identify and translate dative-case objects.
• Use present-tense verb forms to identify whether the corresponding subject must be first, second, or third person, and singular or plural.
• Translate sentences that use es gibt or man.
• Translate nouns that are formed from adjectives.

Whereas English has only tiny traces of three noun cases (nominative, objective, and possessive – link opens in new window), German is thoroughly dependent on four cases. Beyond nominative and accusative, which were covered in Unit 1, we now add the genitive and dative cases.

Genitive

Genitive case signals a relationship of possession or “belonging to.” An example translation of this case into English might be from das Buch des Mannes to “the man’s book” or “the book of the man.” In English, possession is usually shown by either an ending (apostrophe +  s) or with the preposition “of.” In German, the genitive case can be recognized from case endings and / or article forms.

Note:

1. The noun in the genitive case follows the noun which it modifies.
2. des and eines are useful forms to remember because they are completely unique to the singular genitive case and are thus helpful as starting points to figure out the grammatical structure of a sentence.
3. Masculine and neuter nouns change forms in the genitive case (when singular). The noun endings –s or –es are added (-s for polysyllabic nouns, –es for monosyllabic).
   

Genitive Noun Chains

In formal or scientific German you will sometimes encounter chains of genitive phrases which can be awkward to translate into English. For example:

die Bücher der Professorinnen der Universität
(the books of the women professors of the university)

Dative

Dative case is used for the indirect object of sentences and with certain prepositions (prepositions are covered in Unit 5). First review the concept of “indirect object” in English. An example is: “The woman (subject) gives the man (indirect object) the book (direct object).” Here we can see that English relies on the order of those two nouns to signal which noun is the direct vs. indirect object. Or consider: “The woman gives the book to the man,” in which English relies on the preposition “to” to signal that the man is getting the book, not the book getting the man!

In German, word order is much more flexible. You need to be able distinguish which phrases which are in dative case and which are in accusative case because this – rather than word order or prepositions as in English – is often what communicates the meaning of the sentence to the reader. Case distinctions can in fact communicate a variety of meanings, as you will learn throughout this course.

Some sample sentences:

Don’t forget the word-order rules from Unit 1. The first example sentence above may also appear in the following forms, but will still have the exact same meaning, although a subtle emphasis is slightly different in each sentence.

Dem Mann gibt die Frau das Buch.
Das Buch gibt die Frau dem Mann.

Think of this as German taking advantage of the expressive freedom granted by the use of cases and endings, a freedom we don’t have in English.

Points to remember:

1. dem and einem (i.e., the -m ending) are unique to dative singular, and are thus useful anchors when reading a sentence.
2. Dative plural always adds an –n to the plural form of the noun if one does not already exist, e.g., den Männern (dative n) but den Frauen
3. Many singular nouns appear sometimes with an optional -e ending in the dative case only. Examples: dem Staate, nach Hause, im Grunde

Memorization

Now is a good time to begin memorizing the article forms for all four cases, three genders, and plural. You will find that it’s much, much simpler to memorize the meanings of the handful of different articles than to learn to recognize the multiple unique forms (plural, genitive, etc.) of every noun in the German language. By Unit 4 you will have finished learning about all the types of word endings associated with the four noun cases, three genders, and singular/plural status. Article forms and word endings give you essential information about a German sentence even before you recognize what individual words mean. Section 3 of this unit gives you a handy chart. If you have memorized these, you can save yourself a lot of dictionary time.

Dative Verbs

Some frequently used verbs whose objects always appear in the dative case are:

Familiarize yourself, by looking up the example verbs above, with how your dictionary indicates when verbs take a dative object. How can you tell which English translation you should use, and what special abbreviations does your dictionary use in these cases?

Common Nouns with Endings in the Singular

The singular forms of certain masculine nouns (such as Mensch, Student, Herr, Nachbar, Polizist, and Junge) will take an –n or an –en on the end in all cases but the nominative. These special nouns are sometimes called “n” nouns. Thus, for example, Student becomes Studenten in sentences such as Ich glaube dem Studenten and Das ist das Buch des Studenten. Because these singular nouns can be easily confused with their plural forms (which are often exactly the same: for example, the plural of der Student is die Studenten), you can see why your reading success is dependent on paying close attention to all the case markers on display in any articles, surrounding words, and verb forms.

The following charts summarize the article forms and noun spelling changes across all four cases. What you need to memorize is the "range of meanings" of each article. For example: Whenever you encounter der, you need to know that you are dealing with either nominative masculine, dative feminine, genitive feminine, or genitive plural. This reading skill is sometimes going to be crucial for understanding the structure of German sentences.

Definite Article

Indefinite Article

Remember:

1. das and ein always indicate singular.
2. des and eines are unique to singular genitive.
3. dem and einem are unique to singular dative.
4. die with nouns ending in –en is always plural.

Difference from English Usage

As you can see, German definite articles – in all their variety – carry a lot more information than does our one-size-fits-all, English "the." Accordingly, German uses definite articles more often than English does. This is particularly important for you to consider when a German sentence makes a universal statement. In English we signal a universal statement by leaving out "the" or using plural forms of nouns. German, however, often still needs the noun articles in order to clarify the sentence syntax. So it is up to you to interpret whether a statement is universal or not from the context and sense of the sentence.

Die Freiheit der Meinung erlaubt aber nicht die Verächtlichmachung von Religionen.
Freedom of thought does not, however, permit the disparagement of religions.

(A quotation from an online discussion forum in Germany.) Your own knowledge of English tells you that translating the first phrase as "The freedom of the thought" would be inappropriate (because it doesn’t make sense, right?).

Similarly, German speakers may use definite articles with proper nouns or specific individuals (which we don’t do in English) in order to clarify sentence syntax. This usually occurs in more informal situations. For example:

Nein, Willi, das gehört der Mutter.
No, Willi, that belongs to Mom (or: to your mother).

Dem Karl verdanke ich die blauen Flecken hier.
I owe these bruises here to Karl.

The reverse is not true, however. You must always understand a German noun that has no article just as you would an English noun that has no article (like Religionen in the first example above).

Finally, do not over-apply this rule. When inclusion of the definite article in German does make sense to carry over in to your English translation, you must do that. Imagine if the German sentence had omitted the definite article: if that would give you a different meaning, then clearly you need to respect the fact that the German sentence chose to include the definite article.

As you begin memorizing the articles for the four German cases, it may help to simultaneously be memorizing the pronouns for the four cases, since articles and pronouns share some patterns of case and gender-specific spellings. It may all "make sense" as you begin to recognize the spelling patterns. Memorizing the articles and pronouns for the four cases, three genders, and plural is a tedious but necessary and relatively small-scale task for learning to read German.

You should be able to find complete charts of all the article and pronoun forms in a reference section within your German-English dictionary. Meanwhile, here is a pronoun chart:

Compare the article charts. Some example similarities to note which aid your memorization task: –m as in ihm is always dative singular, –r as in ihr dative singular, –en as in ihnen and Ihnen dative plural.

Points to remember:

1. Remember the tip from Unit 1, section 3: that German is very consistent about using the appropriate, gendered pronoun to refer to inanimate nouns, not just for people and animals. That’s why all of the third person singular pronouns can mean “it” as well as “him” and “her”.
2. Pronouns agree in gender and number with the noun to which they refer, and are therefore useful clues for understanding sentences and especially for shared references across multiple sentences. Let pronouns be an easy, reliable way for you to get case, gender, and number information.

“Regular” verbs are simply those which follow the most common pattern of conjugation. Some grammar books refer to these verbs as “weak” verbs. Thus, using spielen (to play) as our model the present tense is formed as follows:

For our purposes the third person singular and plural forms are the main ones. Thus, the ending –t indicates singular and the ending –en plural.

Should the stem of the verb end in –t or –d, for example, warten (to wait) and finden (to find), the stems of which are wart- and find-, then the verb is conjugated as follows:

The only differences then are in the singular, second and third person, where an –e is added so that we can append the personal endings –st and –t.

Note: The majority of verbs in German form their present tense in the way shown for our example spielen.

Remember that the German present tense can be translated variously: “he does play,” “he is playing,” “he plays,” or even – depending on time information given in context – “he will play,” “he has played,” or “he has been playing.” Note that all of these translations still share the meaning that the action is taking place at the “present moment” (although that can be defined by a specific future time reference) – whether the action is ongoing, starting, finishing, or only momentary is what you need to interpret from context. In any case, German present tense never indicates a completed, past event.

Irregular verbs (also called “strong” verbs) change their root form as they are conjugated. For the most part, they form their present tense in exactly the same way as regular verbs. Thus “he swims” is er schwimmt, “they swim” sie schwimmen.

Some irregular verbs, however, will undergo a change in the stem vowel in the present tense singular, second and third person, for example: du gibst (you give) and er gibt (he gives) are conjugations of geben (to give). The importance of this change to the reader of German is that you will have to recognize that the meaning of, for example, gibst, will be found under the dictionary entry for geben. You should remember that there are four patterns of vowel changes in case you need to look up a verb in the dictionary:

A list of the most common irregular verbs (strong verbs) is included in most dictionaries and grammar books. You do not have to memorize all the verb changes for reading purposes. The present tense singular, both second and third person, of these verbs will still carry the endings described above for weak verbs, ending in –st or –t.

There is one notable exception: the modal verbs, which are covered in Unit 10, and the verb wissen (to know a fact). The latter is conjugated in the present tense as:

The genitive and dative forms of wer (who) are wessen (genitive: “whose”) and wem (dative: “to/for whom”). Examples:

es gibt

es gibt = “there is” and “there are.” Example:

Es gibt jetzt zwei Zeitungen in Darmstadt.
There are now two newspapers in Darmstadt.

man

The pronoun man can be translated directly as “people,” “they,” and “one”.

Man sagt, es regnet.
They (people) say it is raining.

Sometimes it makes more sense in English to use an even more abstract way to translate man, by using English passive voice. For example:

In schlechten Zeiten kürzt man die Budgets.
In bad times, budgets are reduced.

Keep in mind that the essential meaning of man is that the speaker cannot or does not want to specify a subject for the sentence’s main verb. The next two examples contrast a situation calling for direct translation with one requiring a more abstract translation:

Many adjectives, particularly those expressing abstract ideas, can be formed into neuter nouns according to the pattern which follows below. These adjectival nouns get modified by adverbs rather than by adjectives, in agreement with the normal relationship of adverbs to adjectives, including adverbial usages of words such as viel (much) and nichts (nothing).

The original adjectives, “gut,” “interessant,” “schön,” and “neu”, are capitalized and appear (for our current purposes) with an –es ending. By Unit 4 you’ll learn to recognize the other endings these adjectival nouns will get when they’re used in genitive and dative cases. Just remember that adjectival nouns are spelled – and take their own modifiers – as if they were modifying some (absent) neuter noun, but otherwise they function as that neuter noun.