The German Language: Nouns and the Accusative Case

                Consider the following sentence: “The boy went to her house and gave the girl a gift.” It seems like a simple sentence in English, and there is not much to think about when you are saying it or writing it out. There are nouns, verbs, prepositions… the norm for a sentence. But break that sentence down into a grammatical sense, with a focus on the nouns and their cases: “The boy (nom.) went to her house (dat.) and gave the girl (acc.) a gift (dat.), with the abbreviations standing for nominative, accusative, and dative cases. In English this doesn’t mean much, because we have only one word for ‘the’ and ‘a/an,’ but in different languages, such as German, this matters.

Because the case of a noun in a given sentence affects the article given to the word (and possibly the spelling of the word itself), it is important to understand the different cases as a student. The accusative case is what is seen as the direct object. The direct object receives the action of a “transitive verb,” or verbs such as to see, to give, to feed, to wear. This means, when considering an accusative noun, you ask “what is given,” “what is fed,” or “what is worn.” In our sample sentence, the verb for the second half of the sentence is “gave,” or “to give.” Look at the second half of the sentence, and ask “what is being given?”

“… and (he) gave the girl a gift.”

What is being given? It is not the boy or the girl, but instead the gift is the thing being given to the girl by the boy. This may seem obvious and easy, but once you get into trying to speak German and write German comfortably, it helps to think these things out so you can be more easily understand. The word for “the gift” in German is das Geschenk. Das Geschenk is, admittedly, a poor example for showing the importance of identifying the accusative case, because the word for “the” in neuter German words is das in both the nominative (subject) and accusative cases. Had the boy been giving the girl “the jewelry” instead of the gift, the change is clearer, as the masculine form of ‘the’ is der, or der Schmuck (“the jewelry, which is a masculine noun), Let’s revise our sentence:

(New) English: The boy went to her house and gave the jewelry to the girl.

German translation: Der Junge ging zu ihrem Haus und gab den Schmuck zu dem Mädchen.

                As previously stated, masculine nouns in German receive the masculine word for “the,” der. Der is the base word for “the” in German masculine nouns, and it only applies in the nominative form. When that same masculine word, der Schmuck, is put into the accusative position as in our example, it becomes den Schmuck, with the der changing to den to symbolize the case of the word.

There are a number of prepositions that make the word that follows an accusative word. Such as “for the man.” ‘For’ is a preposition that makes the noun, ‘man,’ accusative. The prepositions, in German, are für(for), um (around), durch (through), gegen (against), entlang (along), ohne (without) and bis (until). You can remember these prepositions by taking the first letter from each of the words as listed except for bis and ohne. “FUDGE + bis/ohne.” When you come into contact with these accusative prepositions, the noun that follows them is accusative (except for entlang, which comes after its noun).

                There are certain prepositions that CAN be accusative or dative, another case (indirect objects as opposed to the accusative ‘direct object’). These are an, auf, in, hinter, neben, über, unter, vor, and zwischen. These prepositions are called Wechselpräpositionen, or “changeable/removable prepositions,” because they can be accusative or dative. The thing to remember about these prepositions, when determining whether they are accusative or dative, is that the prepositions are accusative if there is movement implied in the sentence. See the following example:

English: They go once a month to the movie theater.

German: Sie gehen einmal im Monat ins Kino.

Kino, the German word for cinema or movie theater, is accusative in this case. The Wechselpräpositionen, in, implies movement because “they” are going TO the movie theater, showing movement. In our sentence, in and das are combined to make ins. One other time you will use the accusative case that is not listed above is when you are saying something to the effect of “There is…”. See the following:

E: There is a man.

G: Es gibt den Mann. *Usually after the word “is” the word would be nominative, but because the German idiom for “There is” is Es gibt, using the verb geben instead of sein, the following word is accusative. The German translation is literally “It gives a man.”

Here is a list of the declensions of the accusative nouns for German masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural nouns. The only gender that changes from its nominative counterpart is masculine:

Den Hund – the dog

Diesen Hund – this dog

Einen Hund – a dog

Meinen Hund – my dog

Die Frau – the woman

Diese Frau – this woman

Eine Frau – a woman

Meine Frau – my woman

Das Mädchen – the girl

Dieses Mädchen – this girl

Ein Mädchen – a girl

Mein Mädchen – my girl

Die Menschen – the people

Diese Menschen – these people

(Plural by definition inherently eliminates a need for “ein(e)”)

Meine Menschen – my people

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