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A Simple Introduction to German Nominative and Accusative Cases
German grammar can seem confusing, especially when you consider the different cases.
It can get even more confusing when you dive into the articles and how these change with each case.
But have no fear!
Today, we have an easy introduction to the German nominative and accusative cases.
Contents
- Common Confusion Between dem, den, die, der and das
- What Are Grammatical Cases, Anyways?
- What Is the Nominative Case?
- What Is the Accusative Case?
- English Pronoun Changes Are Similar to German Pronoun Changes
- How Exactly Do German Pronouns Differ in Nominative and Accusative Cases?
- German Definite Articles in Different Cases
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Common Confusion Between dem, den, die, der and das
A super important difference between German and English is that German has several different words for the English “the.”
In English, we use one definite article (“the”) for plurals, animals, furniture, places… absolutely everything! The indefinite article (“a”) doesn’t change either (except when used with words beginning with a vowel, when it becomes “an”).
In German, there are many different articles. If you’ve already started studying the language, you’ve probably already encountered some of the different ways to say “the:” dem, den, die, der and das.
But you probably aren’t sure when to use dem, den, die, der or das with certain nouns and prepositions. It can be difficult to understand why you hear one instead of another when watching German TV shows or German movies.
It all has to do with the German cases, one of the most notoriously tricky parts of learning Deutsch.
Don’t worry, everything will start to make a little more sense soon!
In this article, I’ll quickly break down just what the different cases in German entail, with a particular look at the German nominative and accusative cases—and give you an easy summary of how to use them.
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What Are Grammatical Cases, Anyways?
Despite having only “the” as an indefinite article, English does have different cases! If you grew up speaking English, and have never studied grammar extensively, you may not be aware of what grammatical cases mean for a sentence or how to use them.
If you’re like I was before I started learning a second language, you may not even really know what a grammatical case is!
However, an explanation of English pronouns can provide an easy demonstration of case changes, which will make the German cases a whole lot easier to understand.
Take a look at the following two sentences about a man and a dog:
He pets the dog.
The dog bites him.
What changes in these sentences? Well, “he” and “him” both refer to the same thing: the man who is interacting with the dog. But in the first sentence, the man (“he”) is nominative, whereas in the second sentence, the man (now “him”) is accusative.
The change in cases from nominative to accusative means that the pronoun referring to the man changes. Let’s look at this in a bit more detail now, so that you can figure out the difference between the German nominative and accusative cases.
To keep things simple, we’ll show you how the nominative and accusative cases work using the English example above, because the grammatical concept is the same in German and English. Once you understand each case, we’ll show you how they impact articles and other words in German.
What Is the Nominative Case?
In the first sentence above, the man is the subject of the sentence. He is the one doing the action (petting) to the dog.
This means that the man, “he,” is in nominative case. The nominative word in a sentence is the subject: the person or thing that is doing the action indicated by the verb.
More examples are:
“The girl is running.”
“The house is on fire.”
What Is the Accusative Case?
The dog, having an action done to it, is accusative in the first sentence. We call this the “direct object” in English.
The accusative word in a sentence is the direct object: the person or thing that is being acted upon. In the second sentence, the dog is now the subject, and the man is accusative.
Therefore “he” becomes “him” in English, changing from nominative to accusative. “The” does not change because, as discussed above, it is the only definite article in English.
English Pronoun Changes Are Similar to German Pronoun Changes
The same case change happens when “she” becomes “her,” and “I” becomes “me.” These changes may seem totally easy and intuitive to you if you have been speaking English all your life. Imagine how weird it would sound if you said, “Her drives the car” instead of “She drives the car,” or “The professor talked to I” instead of “The professor talked to me.”
When you use the wrong case in German, it sounds equally confusing and wrong. But now that you understand the German pronoun changes from nominative to accusative are similar to those in English, keeping track of German pronouns shouldn’t be too hard!
How Exactly Do German Pronouns Differ in Nominative and Accusative Cases?
Let’s look at the same example in German, for a specific demonstration of how German articles are different depending on their cases:
Er streichelt den Hund. (He pets the dog.)
Der Hund beißt ihn. (The dog bites him.)
First off, let’s look at the difference between er (he) and ihn (him). As I just pointed out, you don’t have to worry too much about this part because we just learned the difference between “he” and “him,” and it is the same for the German pronouns!
Male, Female and Plural German Personal Pronouns
Er is nominative in the first sentence, and the man becomes accusative in the second sentence, switching to ihn. But what happens if we change these sentences to be about a woman?
Sie streichelt den Hund. (She pets the dog.)
Der Hund beißt sie. (The dog bites her.)
The female pronoun does not actually change in the accusative case—it is exactly the same as the nominative. You can use sie (she, her, they) for both sentences here. Although this is not quite like English, it shouldn’t be too hard to remember.
The German plural pronoun sie (“they” in English) is the same as the female pronoun: they are both sie. So, just as the female sie is the same in accusative and nominative case, the plural sie is also the same in both cases.
Neutral German Pronouns
What if we wanted to talk about a robot (or any other non-gendered entity) and a dog?
Es streichelt den Hund. (It pets the dog.)
Der Hund beißt es. (The dog bites it.)
The neutral pronoun, es (it), also remains the same in nominative and accusative. This is the same as sie (she, her, they). These two should be fairly easy to keep track of.
More German Pronouns
Below is the same example for “I” and “me:”
Ich streichele den Hund. (I pet the dog.)
Der Hund beißt mich. (The dog bites me.)
Ich (I) becomes mich (me). Similarly, du (you) becomes dich (you):
Du streichelst den Hund. (You pet the dog.)
Der Hund beißt dich. (The dog bites you.)
Just as the English “we” becomes “us,” wir becomes uns:
Wir streicheln den Hund. (We pet the dog.)
Der Hund beißt uns. (The dog bites us.)
What about the formal pronouns?
Sie streicheln den Hund. (They pet the dog.)
Der Hund beißt Sie. (The dog bites them.)
Here we have the formal pronoun, which you may know as Ihr (formal “you”), in the nominative case, changing to Sie (formal “you”) in the accusative case. Pretty straightforward.
German Definite Articles in Different Cases
Now that we have gone over the indefinite articles, let’s take another look at this sentence. Something has happened to the definite articles—a change we don’t see in English.
Er streichelt den Hund. (He pets the dog.)
Der Hund beißt ihn. (The dog bites him.)
Der Hund is straightforward enough. Obviously that means “the dog.” But what does den Hund mean? Why isn’t der used here? Dog is a masculine noun in German, and masculine nouns use der as their definite article, or ein as their indefinite article:
Er streichelt einen Hund. (He pets a dog.)
Ein Hund beißt ihn. (A dog bites him.)
The same thing happens when we put the indefinite article in these sentences: we recognize ein Hund (a dog), but what about einen Hund?
The explanation for this change in noun article is that the case of Hund changes. Just as the man changes, in the second sentence, from nominative to accusative position, so does the dog, from accusative to nominative.
ein Hund, der Hund = nominative
einen Hund, den Hund = accusative
When the dog changed from being the thing being acted upon in the sentence to the subject, it changed from accusative to nominative. In German, in the case of der Hund, its article changes as well.
Definite Articles in the German Nominative Case
The nominative articles for German nouns are the ones you may have already learned if you are a German beginner:
der, ein = masculine
die, eine = feminine
das, ein = neutral
die = plural
Definite Articles in the German Accusative Case
Unfortunately, I have to let you know that your knowledge isn’t quite complete: when nouns are in the accusative case, they have different articles… at least, some of them do.
den, einen = masculine
die, eine = feminine
das, ein = neutral
die = plural
It turns out that, in fact, only masculine nouns actually change pronouns in accusative case. So you only need to worry about new articles when masculine nouns are involved.
This lets you off the hook some of the time, but when it comes to nouns that use der in the nominative case, you’ll have to remember that this changes to den when the noun in question is the direct object of a sentence.
This has been a quick introduction to what the German nominative and accusative cases look like, what they mean, and how to use them. Simple foundational rules like these will be useful to know once you really start getting into learning German grammar.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
