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- "We need our dog!"
"We need our dog!"
Translation:Wir brauchen unseren Hund!
15 Comments
Because the dog (masc.: der Hund) as direct object is in accusative case, and the possessive pronoun agrees with that.
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?
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
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
