The four German cases in one table

A case is the role a noun plays in its sentence, and German shows that role on the article rather than on the noun. In Der Hund holt den Ball (the dog fetches the ball), the dog acts and the ball is acted upon, and the two articles, der and den, tell you which is which. There are four such roles, and each has a question word that finds it.

The nominative names the doer and answers wer? (who?). The accusative marks the target and answers wen? or was? (whom? what?). The dative marks the receiver, the person the action arrives at, and answers wem? (to whom?). The genitive marks the owner and answers wessen? (whose?). One sentence about giving shows the first three roles at once.

Ask the questions and the roles come apart. Wer gibt? Ich, nominative. Was gebe ich? Den Ball, accusative. Wem gebe ich ihn? Dem Kind, dative. The fourth case hangs one noun behind another to say whose it is, as in das Fahrrad meines Vaters (my father's bicycle).

The four cases in one table

The table below is the whole machine for the definite article (der, die, das, the). The nominative row is the dictionary form you already know. The accusative changes exactly one cell. The dative and the genitive rows are where the new forms live, and even there the feminine and the plural share their endings.

Sixteen cells, and twelve of them are forms you knew before you started. Two cells make the noun itself join in. In the dative plural the noun takes a final -n of its own (den Kindern, den Gästen), unless it already ends in -n (den Frauen) or in -s (den Autos). In the masculine and neuter genitive the noun takes -s or -es (des Mannes, des Vaters). Every word that plays the article game (ein, kein, mein, dein, sein, unser, dieser, jeder) takes the same endings, so the second table is the first one with a different stem, except that ein has no ending at all in the masculine nominative and the neuter nominative and accusative.

Nominative and accusative: one letter changes

The accusative is the case of the thing the action is aimed at, and its table is almost empty of news. Only the masculine changes. Der becomes den, ein becomes einen, and the signal to listen for is -en (den, einen, keinen, meinen). Feminine, neuter and plural wear the same form in both roles, so three quarters of the table is a gift.

Two everyday patterns come with the accusative built in. Haben (to have) always takes an accusative object, so you say Ich habe einen Bruder (I have a brother) the moment you own anything masculine, and es gibt (there is) demands the accusative too, as in Es gibt einen Park in der Nähe (there is a park nearby).

Dative: the receiver

The dative is the case of the receiver. The accusative is what you give, the dative is who you give it to. Picture the sentence as an arrow. The nominative is where the arrow starts, the accusative is what flies, and the dative is where it lands. The verbs of transfer (geben, schenken, zeigen, bringen, to give, to give as a present, to show, to bring) all build this three-role sentence.

English marks the receiver with to or by position alone. German uses the case ending instead, so dem Kind already means to the child, and adding zu is a classic English-speaker's mistake. Ich gebe ihm das Buch (I give him the book), never Ich gebe das Buch zu ihm. In conversation the receiver is usually a pronoun, and these are the case forms you will say most often.

A small family of verbs takes the dative even though nothing changes hands. They are helfen (to help), danken (to thank), gefallen (to please), gehören (to belong to), antworten (to answer a person), passen (to fit), schmecken (to taste good to someone) and folgen (to follow). Three of them feel backwards, because the thing is the subject and the person is the receiver. Das Kleid gefällt ihr sehr is literally the dress is pleasing to her, German for she likes the dress a lot.

Genitive: the owner

The genitive marks the owner and answers wessen? (whose?). Its signals are -es and -er, and masculine and neuter nouns themselves take -s or -es. Names take a bare -s with no apostrophe (Lenas Fahrrad, Lena's bicycle), which English speakers must unlearn once.

Spoken German often replaces the genitive with von plus dative, and das Fahrrad von meinem Vater is as correct as das Fahrrad meines Vaters. Written German loves the genitive, and three prepositions officially demand it, während (during), wegen (because of) and trotz (despite). Write wegen des Wetters, and do not be surprised to hear wegen dem Wetter at the bus stop.

What actually decides the case

Doer, target, receiver and owner are pictures, not definitions. Some sentences have no doer and no target, and their cases are just as firm. Der Mantel gefällt mir (the coat pleases me, I like the coat) has a dative with no giving in it. What decides a case is the verb, which comes with its cases built in the way an English verb comes with its prepositions, and the preposition, which comes with a case of its own.

The prepositions sort into closed clubs. Seven demand the dative (aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu, out of, at, with, after, since, from, to), five demand the accusative (durch, für, gegen, ohne, um, through, for, against, without, around), and the written genitive belongs to während, wegen and trotz. Learn each verb and each preposition with its case, and the table above becomes something you hear rather than consult.

Where this comes from

This page condenses the part called The Four Cases in Deutsche Grammatik, in particular chapter 13 (Nominativ und Akkusativ), chapter 15 (Der Dativ) and chapter 36 (Der Genitiv), where the completed table above finally appears. The book teaches the cases one at a time, so that when the sixteen-cell table arrives, twelve of its cells are already familiar.

Each full chapter opens with a scene (a garden with a dog and a ball, Grandma's birthday party, an attic full of old photos) in which the new forms appear before they are explained, and closes with corrected learner mistakes and five exercises with an answer key. Chapter 14 gives the accusative its pronouns, chapter 16 sets wen and wem side by side, chapters 17 to 19 hand the cases to the prepositions, and chapter 36 adds the n-declension and the relative forms dessen and deren. The free sample on the book page contains the front matter, the table of contents and the first two chapters.

Continue with

• Der, die or das? The endings that decide German gender
• weil, denn, deshalb: German connectors and where the verb goes