Let's take a look at the German accusative.
Resources for further reading:
How to pronounce the German Accusative
Practice Your Pronunciation With Rocket Record
In this example “Anna” is the direct object, “Paul” is the subject and “loves” is the action. As you know you can use the questions “who” (“wer”) or “what” (“was”) in the nominative case to find out what the subject of the sentence is.
The questions for the accusative are “whom” (“wen”) or “ what” (“was”). In German the accusative is also called the “whom-case” (“der Wenfall”).
The masculine articles “der” and “ein” change when used in the accusative. “Der” turns into “den” and “ein” into “einen”. Feminine articles (“die” and “eine”) and neuter articles (“das” and “ein”) don’t change. Here is an example to make it more clear:
Whom does the woman love? The man. In this sentence “den Mann” (the man) is the person the action is happening to, therefore “den Mann” is accusative. Even without asking the “whom ” question you can see that “den Mann” is accusative because “der” changed into “den”.
For example:
You might wonder why “ein Buch” doesn’t change into “einen Buch”. This is because the noun “Buch” is neuter (“das Buch”). Only masculine articles change in the accusative.
Here are a few recommended German lessons to try next!
- The letters in the German alphabet are the same as in English! Find out all about it.
- Learn the correct way to use German articles here.
- Wanting to create more complete sentences? You need to be able to use the German conjunctions.
Bis bald!
Paul Weber: Rocket German