Understand the German Dative Case

The German dative case’s slogan: “I come receiving gifts”. No, not ‘bearing gifts’, receiving gifts and just like this case confuses idioms, it confuses us.

This case can become quite complicated since it is used for the indirect object. (If you haven’t read my post on cases yet, it might be a great idea to have a peek at that one first before you read on. Especially if you have trouble identifying the nominative and accusative cases.)

Now you might be asking that if the dative case is only used for the indirect object it can not be that complicated? This is true, but only if you know how to identify the indirect object, which is where most people get lost.

What is the Indirect Object?

This object is the one receiving gifts. So, let’s say it is the child on Christmas eve. In that case, the direct object is the gift and the subject Santa.

Santa gives a gift to the child.

Ok, but I can say the same thing like this:

Santa gives the child a gift.

Does this mean that the child is now the direct object and the gift the indirect object? No, the meaning of the sentence stays the same and this is why the gift is still the direct object and the child the indirect object.

The German Dative Case Made Easy

Take a quick look at this case table. The articles in each block are the ones you will use to precede a noun in the case displayed on the left (you will either use the definite or the indefinite one depending on the meaning of your sentence).

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative Case	der / ein	die / eine	das / ein	die / eine
Accusative Case	den / einen	die / eine	das / ein	die / eine
Dative Case	dem / einem	der / einer	dem / einem	den / einen
Genitive Case	des / eines	der / einer	des / eines	der / einer

So, let’s take the sentence from the previous example and try to write it in German.

Santa – der Weihnachtsmann (Masculine)

gives – gibt

a gift – ein Geschenk (Neuter)

to – an

the child – das Kind (Neuter)

But now we have to consider the table above. With each of the above nouns I used the article that is used in the nominative case, but when forming a sentence in German that is not how it will be used.

Subject: der Weihnachtsmann

Direct Object: ein Geschenk

Indirect Object: das Kind

As we said before: the subject will be in the nominative case, the direct object accusative and the indirect dative. We said that all of them are currently in the nominative case, right? This means that the subject is already in the correct case and the others are wrong.

A neuter noun, similar to the nominative case, will still take either ‘das’ or ‘ein’ in the accusative case. ‘Ein Geschenk’ will thus stay ‘ein Geschenk’. (Just note that this is not the case with all of the genders. In the accusative the masculine articles changes.)

In the dative case, a neuter noun will take either ‘dem’ or ‘einem’ as its article. This means that ‘das Kind’ will, in fact, be ‘dem Kind’.

Now for the sticking together of the actual sentence:

Der Weihnachtsmann gibt ein Geschenk an dem Kind.

Cool, ‘ja’? And what I like even more is that you can, similar to English – switch the objects around without changing the meaning of the sentence.

Der Weihnachtsmann gibt dem Kind ein Geschenk.

Did you see that I did not change the articles? This is because the gift is still being given to the child, which means that the gift is still the direct object and the child the indirect object.

Dative Pronouns

Sometimes, however, when using the dative case we do not use nouns. For example in English we might say: “Santa gives a gift to him”, right? In German, instead of saying ‘to him’ we will use ‘ihm’ which is the dative personal pronoun for ‘er’ (he).

Personal Pronouns in the Dative Case

Nominative	Dative
ich (I)	mir (to me)
du (you, informal singular)	dir (to you, informal singular)
er (he)	ihm (to him)
sie (she)	ihr (to her)
es (it)	ihm (to it)
wir (we)	uns (to us)
ihr (you, plural informal)	euch (to you, plural informal)
sie (they)	ihnen (to them)
Sie (you, singular or plural formal)	ihnen (to you, singular or plural formal)

Using this table you can use any ‘person’ to say the same sentence. Let us once again use our Santa example (merely because I long for Christmas).

Der Weihnachtsmann gibt ihr ein Geschenk. (Santa gives her a gift.)

Der Weihnachtsmann gibt uns Geschenke. (Santa gives us gifts.)

Relative Pronouns in the Dative Case

When talking about relative pronouns, we have to know what they are and when to use them. Yet, to be able to do that we have to take a step backwards and look at what clauses are as well as the types of clauses that there are.

There are two types of clauses; main and subordinate clauses. Main clauses are the main sentence and can stand on its own. Subordinate clauses give extra information about the content of the main sentence, but cannot stand independently. An important thing to note is that both of these has at least a subject and verb.

Relative pronouns (who, whom, whose and that) are used in a type of subordinate clause called a relative clause. They are usually used at the beginning of the clause and are, unlike with English, always used to connect the main and relative clauses. A comma is always used to precede these clauses. We also have to change the word order of the sentence by moving the conjugated verb to the end.

Gender	Dative Case
Masculine	dem
Feminine	der
Neuter	dem
Plural	denen

Here is an example of how they are used (and note that the noun in the reflexive clause is also dative):

Ich habe das Geschenk, dem Weihnachtsmann dir gegeben hat. – I have the gift that Santa gave you.

Something to Note About the Changes of Pronouns in the Dative Case

The changes that occur in pronouns during case changes are similar to those of the articles. In the dative case the masculine article ‘der’ changes to ‘dem’. The personal pronoun for him, ‘er’, changes to ‘ihm’. The resemblance is that both has an ‘m’ at the. Changes in the neuter and feminine genders are similar. The feminine ‘die’ changes to ‘der’ which correlates with ‘ihr’. ‘Das’, similar to ‘der’ changes to ‘dem’, thus is the dative personal prounoun for it ‘ihm’. ‘They’ and ‘Sie’ follows the same pattern. They use ‘ihnen’ which end in ‘en’ just like ‘den’ which is the plural definite article used for plural nouns in the dative case.

The reason why I like this so much is that the dative personal pronouns for ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ is very similar: ‘ihm’, ‘ihr’, ‘ihm’. Linking them to the article makes it less confusing.

Words That Make Us Use the German Dative Case Without a Direct Object.

Now comes the tricky part. Sometimes a sentence does not have two objects and although this might seem normal, it is not. The reason being that usually when there is only one object that object is in the accusative case, right? Not in these cases. Sometimes there is a verb or preposition used in the sentence that indicates movement and then we will use the dative for the object. This is because these words implicate movement and means that the noun will now be regarded as an indirect object.

Dative Prepositions

Dative-Only Prepositions

Deutsch	Englisch
aus	from, out of
seit	since (time), for
von	by, from
mit	with, by
außer	except for, besides
bei	at, near
nach	after, to
zu	at, to
gegenüber	across from, opposite

Dative or Accusative Prepositions

Deutsch	English
an	at, on, to
auf	on, onto, to
hinter	behind, to the back of
in	in, into
neben	beside, next to
über	above, over
unter	under, underneath
vor	in front of
zwischen	between

As we said earlier, the dative noun is the receiving object. This means that it is static. The direct object (accusative), however, is the object being carried over and is this why it implicates movement.

This leads to the conclusion that if one of the prepositions which can either be accusative or dative indicates movement, it is accusative. Otherwise, it is dative. Here is an example of ‘in’ used as dative and accusative:

Dative: Die Jacke ist in dem Schrank. – The jacket is in the closet.

Accusative: Das Kind geht in the Schule. – The child goes to school.

Dative Verbs

These verbs work the same as the above prepositions. All of them are always followed by the dative case, for example:

Das Wetter gefallt mir. – I like the weather.

Deutsch	English
ähneln	toresemble
antworten	to answer
auffallen	to stand out, to make an impression
ausweichen	to evade
befehlen	to order, to command
begegen	to meet someone
beistehen	to stand by, to support
danken	to thank
dienen	to serve
drohen	to threaten
einfallen	to come to mind, to think of something
entgegen	to reply, to retort
erlauben	to allow, to permit
erscheinen	to appear
erwidern	to reply
fehlen	to be missing
folgen	to follow
gefallen	to please (someone)
gehorchen	to obey
gehören	to belong to
gelingen	to succeed
genügen	to suffice, to be enough
geraten	to advise
geschehen	to happen, to occur
glauben	to believe (someone)
gleichen	to closely resemble (someone or something)
glücken	to succeed, to work out
gratulieren	to congratulate
helfen	to help
lauschen	to eavesdrop
misslingen	to fail
munden	to taste good
nützen	to be of use (to someone)
passen	to fit
passieren	to happen
raten	to advise
schaden	to damage, to do harm
schmecken	to taste good
schmeicheln	to flatter
sich nähern	to approach
trauen	to trust
vertrauen	to trust, to confide in, to rely on
verzeihen	to forgive
weichen	to yield to, to make way for
widersprechen	to contradict, to gainsay
winken	to wave (to someone)

This is it, my dearest reader. I hope that somehow I could show you the light at the end of the tunnel regarding the dative case.

xoxo,
Charlé

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