"We are in the big house."

Translation: Wir sind im großen Haus.

[ghettosuperstar]

Warum ist es "großen"? I thought neuter nouns in the dative with strong inflection take "em"?

[ikwilvertalen]

This is actually weak inflection. "im" is a contraction of "in dem", so the weak ending "-en" is added.

[Krishen17]

That's insane (--)

[doublelingot]

weak inflection, dative, neuter, singular ---> im großen Haus

[seasl8]

Is this a euphemism for being in prison, like in American English?

[Stephen83116]

I am still struggling with recognizing a Dative sentence. In the above example, I do not see an indirect object. Having said that, I would assume that there is a word or rule that makes it Dative?

[Hekko2]

When you are somewhere (in the house, in the garden, in the kitchen), you use dative.
Wir sind im Haus.
Wir sind im Garten.
Wir sind in der Küche.

When you are heading to the place, you use accusative.
Wir gehen ins Haus.
Wir gehen ins Garden.
Wir gehen in die Küche.

[Daniel56542]

German sense of humor...

[vickikn]

I thought "to be" was always nominative, so what makes it dative?

[az_p]

The preposition in.

[GMK983154]

why not grosses if haus is a neutre? not grosses?

[Peter295660]

The way I remember it is if the direct object is declined from normal (e.g. der or das changed to dem) then the weak inflection is used and en is added to the adjective.

If the subject is stationary (dormant) then the word "in" forces dative. If it is moving toward the object (active) then "in" forces accusative.

In this example, the subject is dormant, forcing the dative case. The dative case changes das Haus to dem Haus which then requires a weak inflection for "groß".

Thus, the sentence becomes, "Wir sind in dem großen Haus" which contracts to, "Wir sind im großen Haus".

[JRP4]

Wir sind "zum" großen Haus? Different meaning?

[Morten306610]

Zum has a meaning of "towards the" or "to the".

[luminary23]

Could someone please explain how "Wir sind im den großen Haus" is incorrect?
(If I incorrectly used den, I understand. But my understanding of this sentence was that an article - whether den/die/das/der/etc. - should be placed before "großen Haus".) Still scratching my head over dative and whatnot :D

[Chooch639215]

You basically wrote "we are in the the big house." Im is a contraction of "in the" just as in english isn't is is not. So the "the" is already accounted for

[Krishen17]

The dative does not deal with movement, accusative does.
I.e. if you going into the house from the outside you would use accusative. Whereas, if you are already in the house (and staying there) the dative is required.

In this sentence "Im" is a contraction of in and dem. So in the sentence above the article does come before "großen Haus" it's just formed part of im.

( This is my understanding anyway)

[ShubhamSha844303]

this is because gross acts as a adjective here (like color) and it take- en , as always in dative.