Nur wegen einem lächerlichen Strafzettel.

I am confused by the following sentence which appears in 11.1

 I put this sentence into Dunden's proof reader and if agreed that the genitive should have used here.
http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibpruefung-online

I am beginning to wonder about some of the online translation services.  I put the English sentence into three different services and came up with the following results:
1.  "und das alles wegen eines lächerlichen Tickets"
2. "und alles wegen einer lächerlichen Karte"
3. "und alles wegen einem lächerlichen Ticket"

Interestingly, apart from the different cases, none came back with "nur wegen".

Perhaps online German is no different to English.  Australian newspapers for example are full of grammatical errors as is the spoken word in this country.                       

I wasn't so bothered by nur. It is just how they translated the sentence into English.

If you use "merely" then the problem goes away. If you put "merely because of a ridiculous  ticket" then you get "Nur wegen einer lächerlichen Karte" from google.

Incidentally the Leo dictionary gives parking ticket for Strafzettel, I understand from a German friend that it is usually used in this sense.
From
die Strafe - punishment, fine
der Zettel- slip of paper, ticket

I am doing revision at the moment which is why I am trying to really  understand the grammar and vocabulary rather than just learning the phrases. It is a shame that the tutors don't seem to pay attention to the forum.

Hi there,

Technically, wegen would use the genitive case,  but in the spoken language people tend to use the dative case as well, much as the English past tense with words like never, always, etc.

Hope this helps, and sorry for the late response!

Lucia

Thank you for the explanation. However I think it is a bit odd to teach the wrong case in a beginners course without explaining what is going on.