German Cases Short and Sweet

I am constantly frustrated with how many grammar websites out there there make German cases more complex than they need to be. Well actually... they are complex, but you still need launching pad in which to learn the complex stuff. A few months ago, when I was frustrated with wrapping my head the cases, I made a post about them. To reiterate myself; one of the hardest parts of the German language for English speakers to grasp is the cases, simply because they don't exist in English. Yes, the word whom is an example of case in English, but the last person to have ever used the word whom was thrown off of a gorge for being a douchebag by people who thought they liked him.

Unfortunately you still have to memorize this chart:

Chart originally from About.com .

Here are the German cases short and sweet, I promise not to use any words more technical than verb, or noun. If you're as dumb as me, you should be ok. PLEASE NOTE: I am only covering the basic concepts of cases. If you have no idea whats going on in you German class, this will help, but not teach you everything you need to know. (For example, a genitive case for German pronouns exists, and is not covered here).

Nominative: Used for basic sentences.

I like cats.
Ich mag Katzen.

The noun that is doing something is in the nominative case. I like cats, I is nominative.

Accusative: Used when you have two nouns and one is acting upon the other.

Bill loves the King

Bill Liebt den König. 

The noun that is on the receiving end of the verb is in the accusative case. The king is on the receiving end of Bill's love, so it is accusative. That means in German, the word transforms from Der König (masculine) to Den König. If you still have not figured this out, I suggest scrolling back up to the top, and staring at the chart.

Dative: In terms of this post, the best way to describe this case is that you have a giver (nominative), a receiver (dative), and something that is being given (accusative). For example:

Bill gave the king a gift.

Bill gab dem König ein Geschenk.

This time "the king" is in the dative case, and "the gift" is in accusative. If we look at the chart above we see that the indefinite article (a or an) for a word that is neuter and accusative, is ein.

Genitive: Denotes possession. Here is an example from the Wikipedia page on genitive case:

 

The book of the schoolgirl.
Das Heft der Schülerin.

You can also use -s to denote possession (without the apostrophe). Pretty simple compared to the other cases, huh?

 

Hopefully if you have been having trouble with learning the cases in German, this will help. Leave me a comment, and let me know if this was helpful.

 

 

 

The Cases Against Learning German

 The most studied foreign language in the United States is Spanish. What is interesting about that, is a majority of Americans identify with a German ancestry. German is the fifth most studied language in the United States though. On the surface one may think that is a little odd, however there are obvious explanations to that; these people are only ethnically German. Generation after generation less and less of them probably learn the language. Meanwhile there is an ever increasing number of Spanish speakers in the United States. Some of which may not even speak English.

When I decided I wanted to learn a second language before I entered college, I originally picked Arabic. "Great!" Everyone said. "You will get a job with the state department no problem!" They were obviously missing the point, but I will get to that later in the post. Here is a hint: it has nothing to do with the fact that I believe governments of the world solely exist to keep people separated, and therefore ensuring government has a job.

For native English speakers the hardest concept for them to grasp when learning German is that of cases. Cases used to exist in Old English, they don't anymore except for the word whom and the last time someone amongst your friends said "whom" they most likely were ostracized. I have often had arguments with other German major friends because I believe that it is easier for a native German speaker to learn English than a native English speaker learning German because one does not have to grasp new concepts that do not exist in their mother tongue.

Deciphering this chart should be the first priority of a German language student

In German there are four cases, on top of that they modify the article (think a or the in English, in German they are der, die, and das) of the word. You need to know the gender of the word right off the bat or you are going to have to make an inference about what is being said. I do not want to tell you something wrong, so I am not going to give a comprehensive review of the  cases. Instead I am going to pull up some specific example that I borrowed from the book Brief German Reference Grammer by Nora Wittman.

Take for example the dative case which is actually Latin for "to give". Had I known this earlier and not simply because I read it in a book on psycholinguistics a week ago I probably would have stopped thinking it was a case that denoted when something happened. The dative case is used in three different contexts:
1. As the indirect object of a verb:

Er gibt dem Chemiker das Salz

2. As an object of certain prepositions, verbs and adjectives:

Wir helfen unseren Nachbarn.

3. To denote possession when referring to parts of the body or to articles of clothing:

Sie wäscht dem Kinde die Hand.

Number three is an exception to the genitive case, which is used to denote possession. Confusing, no?

German is not any more tougher than Latin, and I remember my Latin high school teacher telling the class that one of the finals he had in college was translating copies of Latin notes taken in shorthand.

Just fucking kill me now

Besides the fact that German may be perceived as less useful than Spanish. I wonder if less high school students study German simply because they know / think that it is tough. But then why learn Latin? We saw that an understanding of Latin can help you understand technical words, such as the names of cases. Is studying German too much work? Doesn't every language have it's own quirks? Unfortunately I do not have an answer to these questions. 

Of course if you make the decision not to learn a language based on how tough you perceive it to be, you are in the wrong mindset and you will never learn the language. Everyone I have met, from my high school Latin teacher to foreign university students in the US have loved the language they study; and to a certain extent obsess over it. If there's on thing I have noticed it is that the foreign student who tell me that they want to learn language because it will be useful when they have a career never speak as well as the students that have a general interest in the language. Take that as you will.Take a language that you're interested in, and if you don't care about learning one then just take whatever is going to get you an A.