"We are helping the man."

Translation: Wir helfen dem Mann.

[Patrick191362]

The hell is a dative?

[Ehsan_Mehmed]

Dative means when something is addressed to someone.

[Farzad9575]

dem or der?

[quis_lib_duo]

dem: helfen is a dative verb (= asks for the direct object to be in dative case).

[DavidBoyle16]

Why is it not "wir sind helfen der mann?". Why do I not need sind?

[mizinamo]

Because German doesn't have continuous tenses like English does.

"We are helping" and "We help" both translate into *wir helfen" -- the German present tense looks similar to the "present simple" tense in English.

[Will950572]

Can you have a German sentence without anything accusative or am I not understanding this sentence?

[mizinamo]

Can you have a German sentence without anything accusative

Of course.

The simplest sentence just has a subject (in the nominative case) and a verb -- for example, Ich singe. "I am singing." No accusative needed.

And some verbs (such as helfen, danken, folgen) take an object in the dative case -- so you can have a sentence that has an object but still no accusative.

There's no requirement for accusative case to "complete" a sentence.