"The children sleep after breakfast."

Translation: Die Kinder schlafen nach dem Frühstück.

[blas3nik]

The English sentence has no article ("the") in the sentence, so I wrote "Die Kinder schlafen nach Frühstück.", instead of "... nach dem Frühstück". Is "dem" really necessary there, or can one leave it out?

[deactivated user]

You omit "dem". It has to "nach dem Frühstück".

[wataya]

Seems like two words got lost here. I guess you wanted to say "You can't omit 'dem'. It has to be 'nach dem Frühstück'".

[deactivated user]

Of course. Thanks. Freudian slip? ;)

[alwaysthesea]

Is there a reason why it cannot be "nachdem Frühstück"?

[wataya]

Yes, there is: 'nachdem' is a conjunction while 'nach dem' is a preposition + article. So, it's a different grammatical construction altogether. 'Nachdem die Kinder gefrühstückt haben, schlafen sie nun' would be an example for the use of 'nachdem'.

[Siroggak]

"Das Fruhstuck""[das] changes to [den]""den Fruhstuck".
What am I missing?

The second step is probably wrong, but that's what the site said to me before, istn't it?

[CharlandL]

Check out the chart here- http://german.about.com/library/blcase_sum.htm , and the list of dative prepositions here: http://german.about.com/library/blcase_dat2.htm

Basically, the preposition nach is dative, making the prepositional clause dative. Fruhstuck is neuter. The article required is dative/neuter, thus it requires dem.