German "her" in dative

[Ben862854]

I noticed that "ihr" is the same in dative cases "Ich gebe ihr den Apfel". Shouldn't this be "ihrem" instead? Is this a pure exception of the German language or is there a larger picture I'm not seeing in their grammar?

[Emma-.-.-]

In your sentence the apple is the object (dative) and "ihr" is just the personal pronoun https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/German/Grammar/Pronouns

The form "ihrem" is only for cases when "sie"(she) is the object of the sentence.

[7hAu0bvY]

ich gebe ihren Apfel... would mean the apple belongs to her and you are going to give it to... whom (reciver is missing)? (for dative: whos apple are you giving to someone? hers)

in case of ihrem it could imply you are going to do something with the apple which belongs to her.

like: ich mache Obstsalat mit ihrem Apfel- i will make a fruitsalat using her apple. (dative: whos apple am i using? hers)

or: ich gebe ihrem Apfel- means you are trying to give something to the apple which belongs to her- makes the apple (her apple) the receiver of... what? (dative: whos apple is the receiver? hers)

so if she is the receiver (and the apple the object) it has to be ich gebe ihr den Apfel.

[drvdw]

ihrem is an inflected form of ihr used as a posessive pronoun in the dative case with a masculine or neuter noun. ihr in this case is not a posessive pronoun but a personal pronoun.