"We need our dog!"
Translation:Wir brauchen unseren Hund!
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Am I the only one who doesn't understand all this "accusative case" stuff? Unless you have a degree in the English language, British English teachers never teach us the technical terms for our sentences.... which means that in foreign language lessons we not only have to learn two languages at the same time: a foreign one and the structure and names of our primary dialect which is so flipping hard. Can anyone explain why unseren is used not unsere please? With a description of structure rather than just structural names?
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I can tell you are really frustrated, I was too before I got to start making sense of it, you can read "nominative" as 'direct' , that is when speaking of the subject of the sentence for example
I want this dog
'I' in this case is the subject while 'dog' is the object. Accusative is when its the object is the focus for example
This dog is the one I want
You can see the structure of the sentence has changed. In german the word "this" for both sentences cant be the same. And for each case there is a different suffix for when the object "dog" in this case is masculine, feminine, neuter or plural so it can all be very confusing, and I've not even mentioned dative and possessive. You have to understand the distinctions before they will make sense. Hope this helped.
I speak American English and I never could remember all those grammatical terms because I didn't need them to talk! I only learn about them when learning foreign languages but it's difficult for me too. You are not alone!
You are not alone ,i don't understand a thing about this Accusatives and nominative .Im becoming more confused
Im with you here. I feel like I understand whats happening but don't have the proper terminology to explain it.
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I have discovered what you are saying with my children, perhaps I was fortunate that we were taught grammer at school (I am 70). Can I suggest you buy an English Grammar book, i bought one for my kids. If you know a teacher perhaps they can recommend one or maybe you can get one from the library.
Ok so I'm putting this here because a lot of people are clearly confused by what the accusative is in the first place. It just means the thing/person that directly receives the action of a verb. In English this can be shown by using "to" before the person/thing but sometimes there's no marker: I talk TO HIM. They open THE DOOR for us. We eat THOSE APPLES. Amy wants to talk TO YOU.
Because the dog (masc.: der Hund) as direct object is in accusative case, and the possessive pronoun agrees with that.
The accusative case requires the masculine artikel 'der' (aka unser) to change to 'den' (unseren)
the dog = der Hund (masc) "We" (wir) is the subject here and must take the Nom case. The direct object that takes the action in our sentence is "the dog" (Who is being needed? = the dog). Because "Hund" is the direct object it must take the Akk case.
"Unser" is a pronoun that shows possesion for: 1st person sg. masculin (and neuter) in nominative. This pronoun is declined as the articles "der/die/das". From here on, you need to adapt with the direct object which is in the Akk case so you must add the "-en" termination for masculine = unser +en.
ex: Unser Hund ist groß. (here "Hund" is in nominative)
ex: Wir brauchen unseren Hund. (akk)
ex: Wir danken unserem Hund. (the verb "danken" / to thank, always requires the Dative case, so you add the termination "-em")
ex: Das Futter unseres Hundes ist draußen. (our dog`s food is outside. You have genitive form of "unser" (masc) to show the posession of the food).
Also check: https://www.verbformen.com/declension/articles/unser.htm https://www.thoughtco.com/the-four-german-noun-cases-4064290
Is it safe to assume that it is the same with einen/den? "Ich habe einen Hund" / "Ich habe den Hund" In this sentence Hund is the object, therefore I use einen instead of ein and den instead of der, and now I use unseren/deinen/meinen/ihren/seinen??
