The German Dative Case for Beginners
After this lesson you can use dem, der and den when something is given to someone.
Do this first: Akkusativ
The German Dative Case for Beginners
German marks the person something is given, said or shown TO. That mark is the dative, and it changes the article in front of the noun — dem, der, dem, den.
German marks the person something is given, said or shown TO. That mark is the dative, and it changes the article in front of the noun — dem, der, dem, den.
masculine
↓
dem
der
masculine becomes der. For example: den.
The video for this lesson is being made. Here is the idea in the meantime.
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Kulturnotiz
The dative is the case behind half the fixed phrases you will hear daily: Wie geht es dir?, Mir ist kalt, Das gefällt mir, Es tut mir leid. None of them are optional politeness — they are the ordinary way to say how you are, that you are cold, that you like something and that you are sorry. Learning the case makes all four suddenly make sense at once.
Common questions
+What does the dative mark?
The indirect object — the person something is given, said, sent or done to. Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch: the book is accusative, the man is dative.
+Which prepositions always take the dative?
mit, nach, aus, zu, von, bei, seit. Learn them as a block — they come up far more often than indirect objects do, and everything after them is dative without exception.
+Why does the plural noun get an extra -n?
It is a leftover dative plural ending. die Kinder → den Kindern, die Freunde → den Freunden. Nouns whose plural already ends in -n or -s do not add another.
+Why is der sometimes feminine?
Because der is masculine in the nominative but feminine in the dative. Der Frau is "to the woman" — the same word doing a different job. Context and the preposition tell you which.