- Forum >
- Topic: German >
- "Ich spreche nicht mit meinem…
81 Comments
How my teacher taught the cases were with questions. His example sentence was always "He throws me the ball."
For nominative, "who or what is 'verb'ing?", and the answer to this question will be the subject, in the nominative case. For the example sentence, the answer is "He" because "he" is throwing the ball to me.
For accusative, "Who or what is being 'verb'ed?" the answer for this question will be the direct object, the accusative case. For the example, the answer is "the ball" because "the ball" is being thrown by "he."
For dative, "to whom or for whom is the direct object being 'verb'ed?" and the answer for this question will be the indirect object in the dative case. For the example "me" is the indirect object because "the marker" is being thrown to "me."
Of course, these questions do not apply if the noun is preceded by an accusative (gegen, ohne, um, bis, für, entlang, durch) or a dative preposition (aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, von, seit, zu) which will put them into their respective cases.
I hate these long posts with tons of english 101 terms that we all forgot. Ill try to be simple.
The dog plays.
Der Hund spielt
The dog plays with me
Der Hund spielt mit mir.
The dog is the center of focus and deserves the das der or die.
“me“ is an afterthought and deserves the mir, or meinem whatever is taught in this section.
Hope that helps.
The things you hear about direct / indirect objects apply to an extent, but there are also some prepositions that are used with accusative, so in general, you just have to learn which prepositions are used with which case (which is made easier by the way these skills seem to be organized).
Of course, there are also prepositions which are used with both the dative and the accusative - as far as I know, the difference is then in whether you want to describe: - movement to a location ("I'm climbing onto the roof") - accusative - static position in a location ("I'm standing on the roof") - dative
Accusative: Masc. Sing: "meinen" Fem. Sing: "meine" Neuter Sing.: "mein" Plural: "meine"
The nominative is the same as the accusative except the masculine singular is "mein" (just like in the neuter)
Genitive (for possession): Masc. Sing: "meines" Fem. Sing: "meiner" Neuter Sing.: "meines" Plural: "meiner"
387
"My" is expressing possession. So shouldn't it always be in the Genitive case? Please let me know what I'm missing here. Thanks.
1971
Even though I thought the answer was "meinem" (Dative), I listened to the narrator over and over and - as others have commented below - was convinced she was saying "meinen". :-(
So, I am a little confused here. It is not about dative or accusative, it is about this "nicht". As far as I understood if I want to negate the whole sentence I am putting this "nicht" at the end of it, right? So, in this case, the sentence is finished, there is not anything more to say - I am not speaking with my father, it doesn't stand that I'm not speaking with him but I'm speaking with someone else, or something like that. So, if anyone could explain a little bit more, I wold be grateful...
455
Learning foreign language is always tough for some. I myself learn it through the hard way without knowledge of proper and poor in grammers! Repeatative of word and construction of sentences make us remember better even though in very slow pace!
Singular Dative, action towards. So "I don't speak with" (I don't say anything to) = "Ich spreche nichts mit meinem Vater".
162
I hoped this discussion would explain when one uses meine versus meinem or meinen. I don't understand which is the appropriate one to use in which circumstance.
It is hard to notice the difference only by hearing it. It's important to know the grammar rules, and then you will know when it is "meinem" or "meinen" Meinem is only applied for the dative case for neuter and masculine words. When you see "mit" you don' t have to reason, it always implies a dative case So, "with my father" will always be "mit meinem Vater".
293
That is a good tip, thank you. Can I also ask at this moment, what it means "dative"? I thought I understood before, but I'm seeing right now that I didn't.
I am not a native speaker as well, but I'll try to explain it anyway. If I say "The man gives the woman a flower" I will have nominative, accusative and dative case in one sentence in german. "Der Mann geben der Frau eine Blume" "Der Man" is the subject, it is "der man" who is executing the action - so it is the nominative case. "Der Frau" is the inderect object, that means the one who is receiving something from the subject (in this case, the man). It is "der Frau" instead "die Frau" because is in this case it is an inderect object (dativ). And what the man is giving the woman? A flower! This is the accusative case - the direct object. As "flower" in german is feminine, it stays the same in the accusative case. The concept itself isn't difficult to undesrtand. What it makes difficult is that the same article can be used for different genders on different cases - as "Der" (masculine for nominative case, feminine for the dative case).
Anyway, it's always good to have a support list near: http://german.about.com/library/blcase_dat.htm
Dative is the third Kasus in German. There are two ways of having Dative in the sentence: it either depends on a verb or on a preposition. In this case it hangs on the verb. In this sentence you even have three ways to find out this is dative: one, this is a person and an indirect object, sprechen (mit) is a verb used with dative and the preposition "mit" is always used with dative. Basically, when the dative depends on a verb, it's always about a person (or generally living thing). But then there are verbs with accusative, like verstehen (Verstehst du mich?). To easily say what casus should you use, you can ask "wem?" for third and "wen?" for the fourth casus. If you don't hear the difference here, you can ask "wem geben?" and "wen beschuldigten?" I just want to point out that in the leoniscarlotis' explanation (perfect one) it should be "Der Mann gibt der Frau eine (die) Blume." It's not "geben", because this is third person singular.