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The Four German Cases The Accusative Case
Summary | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive Der Akkusativ • Der Wenfall ALSO > The accusative case with prepositions If you misuse the accusative case in German, it could be very similar to saying something like "him has the book" or "her saw he yesterday" in English. With the confusion this might cause, you can see this is not something to take lightly! It's not just some esoteric grammar point; it impacts whether people will understand your German or not (and whether you'll understand them). In English the accusative case is known as the objective case (direct object). In German you can tell that a noun is in the accusative case by the masculine article, which changes from der/ein to den/einen. (Since the accusative only changes in the masculine gender, you don't need to worry about the feminine, neuter or plural.) The masculine pronoun er (he) changes to ihn (him), in much the same way as English. In the examples below, the accusative (direct object) word is in red: Der Hund beißt den Mann. The dog bites the man. The direct object (accusative) functions as the receiver of the action of a transitive verb. In the examples above, the man is acted upon by the dog, i.e., receives the action of the subject ("dog"). To give a few more transitive verb examples, when you buy (kaufen) something or have (haben) something, the "something" is a direct object. The subject (the person buying or having) is acting on some object.
You can test for a transitive verb by saying it without an object. If it sounds odd, and seems to need an object to sound right, then it is probably a transitive verb. Example: I have... / Ich habe...; He bought... / Er kaufte... - Both of these phrases answer the implied question "what?" What do you have? What did he buy? And whatever that is, is the direct object and in the accusative case in German. On the other hand if you do this with an intransitive verb, such as "to sleep," "to die," or "to wait," no direct-object completion is needed. You can't "sleep," "die" or "wait" something. (Two apparent exceptions to this test, become and be, are actually not exceptions, since they are intransitive verbs that act like an equal sign, and can not take an object.) A good additional clue in German: all verbs that take the helping verb sein (to be) are intransitive. (See our German Verbs page for verbs that take sein.) Some verbs in English and German can be either transitive or intransitive, but the key is to remember that if you have a direct object, you'll have the accusative case in German. The Germanic word for the accusative case, der Wenfall, reflects the der-to-den change. The question word in the accusative is, naturally enough, wen (whom): Wen hast du gestern gesehen?, Whom did you see yesterday? Some German verbs do not take an accusative object. For more about these exceptions, see Dative Verbs (including genitive verbs). Accusative Time Expressions The accusative is used in some standard time and distance expressions. Das Hotel liegt einen Kilometer von hier. The hotel lies a kilometer from here. Accusative Prepositions The accusative is also used with certain prepositions. For more, see the next page. NEXT > Accusative Prepositions MORE > Summary | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive
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German for Beginners Course - The Acccusative Case
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