The German Language: Nouns and the Genitive Case

                When you think of a noun, what do you think of? Chances are you think of “a person, place, thing, or idea,” and maybe you think of a few of your favorite examples of nouns, such as “my car” or “a house.” We are fortunate as English speakers to have a language that places such a small amount of importance on knowing much more to nouns than their meaning and their placement in a sentence. Other languages aren’t so lucky, and there is much more to consider. In English we have one word for “the” and one word for “a” or “an,” and it does not change from sentence to sentence and from noun placement to noun placement, but rather phonetically. See the following sentence:

                “The boy went into the house of his friend and played with the dog.”

In the sentence above, there are three instances where a noun has the article “the” before it. The word “the” comes before “boy,” “house,” and “dog,” and we, as English speakers, do not see much of a difference, when, in reality, each one of those nouns represent a different “case” of a noun: nominative, accusative, and dative, respectively. If you haven’t learned these in school, don’t worry, it shouldn’t affect your speech in English, but it might in German. German nouns are broken down into three “genders” of nouns (not counting plurals), and just one of these genders, masculine, has FOUR different words for “the,” one for each of the cases. We as English speakers have it easy: we have one word for “the,” whereas just one group of nouns in German has four!

                As previously stated, the three nouns in the sentence with “the” before it, but there are four nouns. The last noun, “friend,” is also the fourth noun case, genitive. Genitive nouns show possession, and in English we symbolize this possession usually by “of” (as in our sentence) and for an apostrophe plus the letter ‘s.’ What is the difference for genitive case and, say, the nominative case in German? Well, let’s take the words “his friend” from our sentence and demonstrate the importance of knowing the genitive case in German. The following two German sentences both use the word “his friend,” but the first is the nominative case and the second is the genitive:

Sein Freund hat so viel zu tun, “His friend has so much to do.”                                         

Das Haus seines Freundes is groß. “His friend’s house is big (literally “the house of his friend”).”

                We are using the same two words in both of these sentences, “his friend,” but the spelling of both words is different. The reason for this is the difference in the case, whereas the first sentence has “his friend” as the subject of the sentence, doing the action, whereas the second sentence has “his friend” as a noun that possesses another noun. When you are trying to figure out the genitive case in a sentence, you must ask yourself “to whom does it belong?” In our second sentence, to whom does the house belong? It belongs to “his friend,” so “his friend” is our genitive noun.

                In addition to merely being a possessive noun that reacts to other nouns, the genitive case also comes with prepositions. Much like the accusative and dative case of nouns in German that come with prepositions that make a noun specifically accusative or dative, respectively, the genitive case also has its own nouns. The following is a list of those prepositions that make the following noun genitive:

Statt (instead of), außerhalb (outside of), innerhalb (inside of), trotz (despite), während (during), and wegen (due to). Here are some examples of these prepositions in German sentences:

Während ihres Gesprächs klingelte das Telefon. During their conversation the telephone rang.

Sie will die Vanille statt der Schokolade. She wants the vanilla instead of the chocolate.

Er schlief gut trotz der lauten Stimme seiner Mutter. He slept good despite (in spite OF) the loud voice OF his mother.

                The genitive case is also used outside of the prepositions and typical “possessive” nouns, but it is also used idiomatically in some German phrases, meaning there is no literal translation between the phrase into English and German (if you were to translate “Are you pulling my leg?” into German, it would make no sense, likewise for Ich hab’ die Schnauze voll in German, or “I have a full nose” (I’m sick of it/I’ve had it up to here in English). When you want to say something to the effect of “once upon a time” (not really, but you’ll see what I mean), often you use the genitive case:

Eines Nachmittags ging er dort. “One afternoon he went there.” Notice there is no possession or preposition, yet the German language uses the genitive case here anyway.

Eines Tages machte er einen Spaziergang. “One day he took a walk.”

Eines Samstags wachte er früh. “One Saturday he woke up early.” (Here’s hoping.)

The following is a guide to the different declensions of each of the genders for the genitive case (notice the additions of ‘es/s’ on masculine and neuter words!):

Des Mannes

Dieses Mannes

Eines Mannes

Meines Mannes

Der Frau

Dieser Frau

Einer Frau

Meiner Frau

Des Mädchens

Dieses Mädchens

Eines Mädchens

Meines Mädchens

Der Kinder

Dieser Kinder

(No plural form of “a”)

Meiner Kinder

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