4.1 What a case is — English lost them, German kept them — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say what a grammatical case is in one sentence: a change of form that tells you what job a noun or pronoun is doing in the sentence. Name the four German cases and match each one to a question word: wer , wen , wem and wessen . Find the four cases inside English, where they survive in he, him, his and who, whom, whose , and use that as the key to the German system. Explain why German can put almost any part of a sentence first and English cannot. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Ich habe das Grab meines Vaters besucht. [1] I've visited my father's grave. Das Auto meines Vaters ist sehr schön. [2] My father's car is very nice. Ich kann mir eine Zukunft ohne Elektrizität nicht vorstellen. [3] I can't imagine a future with no electricity. Wessen Idee war das? [4] Whose idea was this? Wessen Spielzeug ist das da? [5] Whose toys are those? Ohne Hoffnung gibt es keine Zukunft. [6] There is no future without hope. Sie kaufte dem Jungen ein Spielzeug. [7] She bought a toy for the boy. Prerequisites : 12.1 — the review of the first phase. You need the nominative and the accusative from 2.5 Grammar , the verb in second position from 2.1 Grammar , and the habit of finding the subject by its article rather than by its place. This is the first lesson of the second phase, and the whole phase has one subject. The first phase taught you to build a German sentence: where the verb goes, how the bracket closes, how a question or a subordinate clause changes the order. This phase teaches you to read the small changes of shape on articles, pronouns and adjectives that tell you who did what to whom. Twelve lessons in a row are given to it, and the reason is simple. Case is the one part of German that has no working counterpart in English sentences. You do not need to learn a new idea so much as rebuild an old one that English let fall out of use. This lesson has no new endings to memorise. It gives you the map: the four cases, the questions that name them, and the places in your own language where all four are still alive. The tables start in the next lesson. A case is a job title Every noun phrase in a sentence has a job. One does the action, one receives it, one benefits from it, one owns something. In English you work out the jobs almost entirely from position and from small words like to and of . In German the noun phrase carries its job on its own article or pronoun, the way a person at work might wear a badge. That badge is the case. There are four badges, and each answers a question. The nominative marks the subject, the one doing the action or being described. Its question word is wer , who . The accusative marks the direct object, the thing or person the action lands on. Its question word is wen , whom . The dative marks the indirect object, the person something is given to, shown to or done for. Its question word is wem , to whom . The genitive marks an owner or a relation of belonging. Its question word is wessen , whose . The question words are the quickest way into the system, because you can hear the four badges on a single word. Here they are in real sentences. German English Wer ist er? [8] Who is he? Wen liebt er? [9] Who does he love? Wem gehört das? [10] Who does this belong to? Wessen Idee ist das? [11] Whose idea is this? Four questions, four forms of one word. The first asks for a subject, the second for an object, the third for the person something belongs to by way of the verb for belonging, the fourth for an owner. The English translations show the problem English has: the first and second both come out as who in ordinary speech, and the third has to be rebuilt with a preposition. German keeps all four distinct, and that is what this phase will train you to hear. Table The clearest table of German cases is the table of personal pronouns, because there English has kept almost the same system. Read it across, one person at a time. The genitive is left out here on purpose: the genitive forms of the personal pronouns are rare and bookish, and the possessive words you already know from 2.9 Grammar do that job in practice. Nominative — who? Accusative — whom? Dative — to whom? English subject and object ich mich mir I , me du dich dir you , you er ihn ihm he , him sie sie ihr she , her es es ihm it , it wir uns uns we , us ihr euch euch you , you — plural sie sie ihnen they , them Sie Sie Ihnen you — polite Three things to see in this table before any rule. First, the accusative and dative columns differ only in the first, second and third person singular and in the third plural; for we and the plural you they are the same word. Second, the dative of the feminine is ihr , the same shape as the nominative of the plural you and as the possessive her — the word whose five jobs you sorted out in the reading of 7.2 Reading , where the dative to her was already one of them; the words around it — the verb's ending, whether a noun follows — tell them apart. Third, English has one column where German has two: him covers both ihn and ihm . That single merger is most of what makes the dative feel new. How English does it English once had all four cases on every noun, and German is the sister who kept them. This is not a metaphor. A thousand years ago the English word for the changed with the case exactly as the German one still does. Set the masculine forms side by side. Case German, masculine Old English, masculine What survives in modern English Nominative der se the , unchanged everywhere Accusative den þone nothing on nouns; him , whom on pronouns Dative dem þǣm him and them are old datives Genitive des þæs the 's of the king's Look at the endings rather than the first letters. German den and Old English þone both carry an n ; dem and þǣm both carry an m ; des and þæs both carry an s . These are the same endings, inherited from the same ancestor. When you learn the German table in the