"Zwei Personen sind in dem Haus."

Translation: Two people are in the house.

[olimo]

Are there any rules to tell when you should contract the article with the preposition and when not? Why is it "in dem Haus" here and not "im Haus"?

[wataya]

"im Haus" is also correct. But I'd prefer 'in dem' in this case as the contraction sounds a bit sloppy.

[Zzzzz...]

What do you mean by 'sloppy'?

[diabLEEca]

Why not 'There are two people in the house'? It seems more natural to me in English than 'Two people are in the house' but I'm not a native speaker so not sure if I should report it or not. :)

[Levi]

@diabLEEca : For 'there are' the following would be used: es gibt or es sind

[cunningham3]

I'm with diabLEEca... you wouldn't really say this in English but, rather, there are two people in the house

[honglog]

should i use dative after in

[wataya]

It depends. 'in' is a two-way preposition. If motion is implied ('into' in English), use the accusative.

[WAVE98]

How do you know when to use "im" or "in" for "in"?

[nblaze20]

I'm not a native but from my understanding it works like this. The accusative case is used when the sentence expresses change of position or movement toward a place, while the dative case is used when the sentence expresses position or place within a fixed location.

So if there's movement you would use the accusative case; therefore, in, and if a fixed position is implied then dative, which would be im, for In + Dem. So accusative = in, oder in den und dative = in dem, oder im!

[WAVE98]

Das ist sehr hilfreich! Danke!:)

[Hec_sc11]

Is it okay to say "Zwei personen sind zu Hause"?

[Azatbek1]

Why not sind im haus