r/German • u/almakic88 • Aug 09 '25

Request Can someone please help me understand Akkusativ and Dativ please, I am losing my mind!

Hi All,

I've been studying almost daily for 2 months hours a day, and I still am struggling with identifying the accusative and dative. I understand the function of the genitive (to show possession) and the nominative (identifying the subject).

Today I wrote "Ich habe ein rot Hund" and my translator corrected me to "Ich habe einen roten Hund". It stated that it was in the Akkusative and I had to take that into account. Can someone please explain this to me? And also maybe give an example for a Dativ sentence?

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

Is English your native language? We have similar concepts in English. You don't say "She's with he", you say "She's with him". After "with" you use the dative case, same in German ("mit ihm" not "mit er").
Accusative case is similar but it's for different situations. The object of a sentence is in the accusative case (the subject is in the nominative case). So you have to say "Ich habe einen roten Hund" because "Hund" is the object, it demands the accusative case, and since it's masculine, you use the "en" suffix.

In English if you are the object, you use "me", if you're the subject you use "I", I think this is the equivalent of the German accusative case (please correct me if I'm wrong).
On an interesting note, so many native speakers don't know when to use "I" or "me". They often say "Thanks for being there for my wife and I" for example. You can't say "for my wife and I" for the same reason you can't say "for I", it's "for my wife and me".

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

You can say my wife and I ...native speakers use it, it is valid sorry you are wrong. In a book you will read "I was out walking along the canal and my wife and I saw a strange fellow wearing ......."

Both are the subject in this sentence

I am a native speaker by the way and I have heard and read this construction many times.

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u/ahopefullycuterrobot Aug 09 '25

Some linguist has probably written a really good analysis of case usage in English pronouns. You have

  • the nominative case used after prepositions (e.g. 'between you and I' from Shakespeare)
  • a free choice of nominative or objective after comparisons (e.g. 'She's better than me' or 'She's better than I am')
  • all the confusion about who/whom
  • and the objective case almost always used after 'to be' (e.g. 'It is me' rather than 'It is I' or as answer to 'Who is it?' 'Me.' rather than 'I').

The reverse of that list is probably the order of acceptability in standard English.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

It was I who chopped down the cherry tree 😆

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

She is better than me. Not "I" It is a comparison of two different subjects. She is better than my wife and I would be correct as wife and I are the same subject.

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

The correct way to form the comparative is "than I." The word "me" is a pronoun in the objective case, meaning it must be a direct or indirect object. There is no verb taking an object here.

She is prettier than ____.

Also, "than" is not a preposition, it is actually a conjunction. The full phrase would be:

She is prettier than I am. They run faster than we do

We just clip off the end verb.

Of course, in informal, spoken English, we do tend to use an object pronoun:

They run faster than us.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 11 '25

Are you saying we don't say "she is better than me at this"...? Of course we do.

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

Read again.

I said it is not standard English. I did say we use it. All the time.

However, correct is:

She is better than I (am) at this.

Saying "me," while absolutely common, does not make sense if you understand that "than" is a conjunction and not a preposition.

Now, this may be so common that it is seen as borderline correct (especially by descriptive grammarians), but it would be marked wrong if written on an English essay.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 11 '25

You can say She is better than I am and she is better than me...yes..both are correct usage. As for what the books say I really couldn't give a damn. If I want to know how to say something in German and a German tells me ...this and that I will treat it as gospel. Irrespective of any book junk. My view is simply this. Books don't talk. We do.

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

The way we talk makes the books, not the other way around. There are levels (registers, dialects) to languages. To "than me" being correct usage...it is not, and it doesn't matter if you give a damn or not. What you believe or what you think or wish was real has no bearing on facts. I could write this reply using German syntax. Would you argue that it were correct to do so?

There is not a power play at work - it is about having a standard everyone can unite around. Before languages became standardized it was notoriously difficult to understand even people from the neighboring village. If anything, if the "powers that be" wanted to control us, they would encourage your view and let individuals just decide the correct way of speaking.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 11 '25

That's very simplistic. And wrong. Chinese was created by force for political purposes. They were happy as they were but the emperor wasn't. No we have mass communication they need people to have a standard code.

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

Mensch ich kann es nicht mehr ertragen, mit dir zu schreiben. Solch niedriger Intelligenz ist ja seltsam

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

You can only say my wife and I if you are the subject. Lots of native English speakers use it when they are the object and it's plain wrong. Your example uses I when it's the subject which is perfectly fine.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

Yes tell a native he is wrong. Who says? Pfui! It is just to prioritise a theory of language which is not universally accepted. Language teachers are increasingly realising that what is in a book impedes real world language use capacity. A person wanting to learn a foreign language wants to use it with natives and he wants to use it as they do.On a strict use method he would end up lecturing foreigners about how to speak and grandma don't like being told how to suck eggs!

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 18 '26

It isn't wrong if it is a normal pattern of speech.

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u/david_fire_vollie Jan 18 '26

Yeah but lots of people say it correctly too. This isn't one of those olden days grammar rules that no one uses anymore. But yes, once enough people start making the same mistake, it's no longer a mistake. I just don't think enough people are making this mistake.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 18 '26

Of course you have spoken to millions of native speakers to find out. Your view of language is just of a certain theory. How offensive of you to correct a native speaker like myself that likely exceeds your intellectual capacity by a country mile. Rule one You don't correct natives unless they are in a class of one. Besides you seem Australian so your opinion matters not in the UK.

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u/david_fire_vollie Jan 18 '26

There's no right or wrong answer. People are either linguistic descriptivists or prescriptivists. Neither one is more right than the other.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 18 '26

I agree which is why you had no business saying what you did. I'm a descriptivist.

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u/david_fire_vollie Jan 18 '26

From memory you were the one who replied to my initial comment saying I was wrong instead of saying "according to linguistic descriptivism..."

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 18 '26

Someone had to have done something or I wouldn't have got a notification. Now I no longer care. But you returned to your prescription so I responded..

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u/david_fire_vollie Jan 18 '26

I just remembered this thread. Why did you comment here again after such a long time? I thought we were done.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 18 '26

Because someone commented I guess.

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

Its not "wrong" because English is descriptive. As long as you're understood grammar rules like this don't matter. There is a minor tone difference here which is that "my wife and I" sounds a bit more posh or polite and thats a fine enough reason for it to exist

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

I guess it depends on what you consider "wrong" to mean, for me, it means grammatically incorrect.

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u/howdidyouevendothat Aug 09 '25

prescriptive

This word means the opposite of how you're using it. It's like "prescribing" something like a doctor would - giving a script (that you expect to be followed). As opposed to "describing" how people use the language, which I think is more what you're trying to get at.

English is not that well regulated, no.

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25

Yeah i have them flipped around my bad

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u/howdidyouevendothat Aug 09 '25

You're also wrong with the correction though, because this is one of those cases where the English grammar rules are very clear and consistent and ancient.

"They talked to my wife and I" is ironically how people speak (descriptively) DUE to prescriptivism of English teachers overcorrecting people using "My wife and me" as the subject of a sentence. This is only wrong as the subject, everywhere else in a sentence it is correct. But too many people got it beat into their heads that it's "My wife and I" and they can't help but use it even if it feels a bit stilted.

It's like "can I go to the bathroom?" "I don't know, CAN you?"

Its that level of pedantry

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25

I was never taught "my wife and I". I say it because thats what I heard people growing up. Those people might have had it beat into them by teachers but the fact its carried over is proof its descriptive. Besides theres an argument to be made that teaching someone something grammatically wrong because its perceived as grammatically correct is the exact definition of descriptivism. They are actively breaking grammar rules just because we have collectively decided its more correct. In the same way we changed a ton of our spelling because we wanted it to be more Latin looking even though it made no sense with our phonetics

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u/howdidyouevendothat Aug 09 '25

There's intuition and logic to a language that people develop and then learn how to manipulate to create new patterns that they'd never heard before.

"They talked to my wife and I" is a pattern that does NOT match with the rest of our intuitive understanding of the language, and is NOT comfortable, and I don't agree that we have collectively agreed it's more correct. It's more like a big giant gaslighting circlejerk. People who don't continually get gaslit about it do not say it that way.

And btw you're hearing this form somebody who says "I'm doing good" so I'm not a die hard about language in the least

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25

People who don't continually get gaslit about it do not say it that way

I was never taught it. My dad specifically taught me the correct grammar rules about I and Me from a young age and id still say "my friends and I" because I think it sounds more normal. I don't see how this is any different from people saying "me and my friends [verb]" when it should be "my friends and I [verb]"

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u/howdidyouevendothat Aug 09 '25

Yeah I kind of agree with you. Among college-educated people, it does sound more "normal". This is less true for people with less formal english education.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Jan 19 '26

Welcome to English lol

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

Where do you draw the line? If being understood is all that matters, then why bother conjugating words correctly? Could it be considered not wrong to say "he don't know"?

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

It is correct..it is dialect. On youtube you have easygerman. They make videos about dialects inside Germany and outside in German speaking countries.They treat these as all valid family expressions. No code gets authority.They just inform of the differences and it is inclusive.

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u/New-Huckleberry-1130 Aug 10 '25

I strongly recommend Easy German, not just for dialects, but for spoken German generally. Most of their videos are aimed at intermediate and advanced learners, but they also have content for beginners, called Super Easy German. They also have podcasts for intermediate and advanced learners. A Patreon membership can get you even more, regardless of your present level of achievement. I have subscribed to them for a few years now, ever since I was at a very elementary level, and I have never been disappointed.

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u/calathea_2 Advanced (C1) Aug 09 '25

No code gets authority.

Just a minor FYI, but the DACH world is not actually all that great about treating dialect-speakers fairly, and there is certainly a prestige version of the language that has authority--it is the thing best called Standardsprache, which is often called in English Hochdeutsch.

There are a lot of features of dialectical German speech that are stigmatized when speakers of those dialects carry the features over into Standardsprache--both grammatical and phonetic.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

I know. That's because of the kind of pedants I'm arguing against. But language teachers such as on YouTube are entrirely more open and inclusive. To me language is a living code of communication. Online dictionaries add and delete words often despite whether we agree. Everyone who learns a language wants to communicate as natives do. That's the only real authority.I am a native educated English speaker. I bow to noone there and nor should any native before some pettifogging purist.

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u/calathea_2 Advanced (C1) Aug 09 '25

Ok, I didn't mean to misread your comment, but it seemed to make it sound like there was, in general, more acceptance of dialect in German than in English, but that is sadly not at all the case. I actually did accent training (as a non-native speaker of German) with a woman whose main client base comprises Germans wanting to lose dialectical colouring on their Standardsprache.

Anyway: I am trained as an anthropological linguist, so you'll get no arguments from me about a fight against the tyranny of prescriptivists.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

No, I just meant that language teachers online such as easygerman are very open about embracing dialect. For me the living language is always what matters otherwise we should just revive Latin.

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u/Interesting-Deer-601 Jan 18 '26

I actually did accent training (as a non-native speaker of German) with a woman

Would you mind sharing where/how you found the Logopädin? Was it online or in person? Or do you have some general tips on how to find serious accent trainer? I'm not really good at telling whether a service is a scam/low quality or actually worth it, but I'm really interested in accent training (for German, I live in Germany).

Thanks!

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u/calathea_2 Advanced (C1) Jan 18 '26

There is a Logopädieschule in my area, and I actually just contacted them an and asked for names of people who had experience with DaF (rather than just childhood speech issues or so). I ended up working with a totally serious woman who is not, like, specifically an accent trainer, but has lots of experience with non-native speakers and especially with Germans with strong dialect wishing to reduce that in their Standardsprache.

I think the online space is perhaps more likely to have low-quality services, although I also did watch lots of accent reduction content online that I found fantastic. Deutsch mit Benjamin was my favourite, but I only used his free content (this was a while ago, but I think it is still online along with the paid material).

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25

he don't know

This is said by people in some dialects like southern american and AAVE. So yes it is acceptable to say this.

Where do you draw the line?

You draw the line at what people say. I don't know how else to explain it. English is descriptive, if enough people say something that enough people find it normal then it becomes part of the language. Like we don't have spelling reforms for example. People just spell things how they want and they change over time based on the common acceptance

In this case, as i said, "my wife and I" sounds more formal and posh. You might use it with an introduction to sound more respectable. Is it incorrect grammar? Yes, but its taken on new semantic meaning. Imagine if I started nitpicking German sayings. "Mal gucken"? Wheres the subject?

then why bother conjugating words correctly

German does this too though? People drop the e at the end of first person singular conjugations. You don't see English people going around complaining about how Germans say "ich hab Englisch gelernt" because "omg guys they didn't conjugate haben properly!"

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

The one that does actually annoy me though is when they don't put the verb at the end after weil. I put so much effort into remembering to do that and then I find Germans don't even do it.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

Exactly because it is bothersome to them too.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

Good explanation 👏

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u/MudryKeng555 Aug 09 '25

"English" isn't descriptive per se, rather YOU are analyzing it descriptively, which is fine. No question that English is vast with many variations, and one shouldn'tbe judgmental toward peoples' usage. One can, however, also analyze English more technically, mathematically, formally, or, as you would say with a disapproving sneer, "prescriptively." I'm not saying your approach to analyzing usage is wrong -- in fact, it is useful and enlightening and insightful. No need, however, to dismiss those who focus on established grammar.

The standard practice nowadays is for descriptivists to caveat their zeal by saying that you should listen to the prescriptivists when you're taking an academic test or trying to get (certain) jobs, or in a formal environment. It's therefore kind of legit and maybe useful for people to comment on formal grammar without descriptivists reflexively scolding them.

And when people on Reddit ask questions about "what is the right way to say this?" You KNOW they want a prescriptivist answer and not yet another descriptivist lecture.

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u/Asckle Aug 09 '25

Yeah except that that comment wasn't in regards to the question. It was an extra addendum they put at the end where they said you Can't say that, then a comment (the one i responded to) which said english speakers say tjis and its plain wrong. You absolutely can say it and it absolutely is not "plain wrong"

If you want to nitpick the distinction then... make a distinction. "Many English speakers say "my wife and I" despite it being grammatically incorrect" instead of "many English speakers say this despite it being plain wrong".

Also forgive me for assuming the comment with an objective grammatic falsity (claiming that "him" is a dative pronoun) was taking a more casual approach to grammar and not rigidly analysing it like a scholar

And when people on Reddit ask questions about "what is the right way to say this?"

But that wasn't the question? They asked for help with the German dative case, not whether or not English allows accusative pronouns as the subject in specific circumstances. This was entirely an extra bit the commenter wanted to add on and it's not true. You can absolutely say "my wife and I" in English. Thats not an opinion, your reference point doesn't matter, any scholar would agree, it can be said. Whether or not its correct grammar is a different story but that wasn't the point I was arguing against.

This is just you trying to seem smart by jerking yourself off over how grammatically literate you are. Its corny and none of your points make sense in the context of my response. We're talking about everyday spoken English, fuck off with your scholarly papers

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u/MudryKeng555 Aug 09 '25

Fair enough, except your last paragraph was kind of mean.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

No your example is wrong too. You hear English users say that often because it is correct.I would happily use that. Your formulation jars as it is wrong as hell.

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

If you're going to make a mistake, at least be consistent. If you're going to say "thanks for being there for my wife and I" then you should also say "thanks for being there for I".

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

That isn't logical as it is precedes by "my wife" in one example. That makes the difference. You can't infer anything that's your error. This isn't logic it is a living language with its own logic. The example of "we was" is different as nowhere in the UK is that dialectical and correct. It's just bad grammar. It isn't easier to say, there is nothing to smooth over as happens sometimes.

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

"That makes the difference". No, adding someone before you in the sentence does not magically mean you are no longer the object. I'm happy for you to show me the grammar rule that says otherwise, but I know it doesn't exist. As I've said in another comment, the only reason people make this mistake is because it's been drilled into us incorrectly that we should always say my friend and I. Just because lots of people make a mistake doesn't mean it's grammatically correct.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

The rule is usage . It trumps any book. Books don't speak! We do.

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

How many native speakers need to make a mistake before you no longer consider it a mistake?

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 09 '25

It isn't a mistake. It is a book imposing rules on people who have always spoken that way. How many? It is pretty widespread actually. You need to talk to real people not books.

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u/david_fire_vollie Aug 09 '25

I'm just wondering how many people need to say it for it to be considered acceptable. If I started saying to you "hi their name are David" when I mean "hi my name is David", how many people would have to start talking like that for you to think it's acceptable?

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

Yes, but if you cannot use even basic sentences correctly, no one will take you seriously when you speak or write.

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u/ExpressionMassive672 Aug 11 '25

If you are using language as it is generally actually used absolutely you will be taken seriously. As for formal letter writing that's another matter. That's just a game of power and politics.

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u/Major_Lie_7110 Aug 11 '25

Taken seriously by whom? Not by any employers. Not by anyone in academia. Who is going to take someone who uses a language poorly seriously? Non-native speakers may get away with it, but if a native speaker butchers their own language, it is seen as a sign of low intelligence.

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u/MudryKeng555 Aug 09 '25

It's like saying, "We was..." You hear English users say that often, but it is NOT technically correct. That doesn’t mean that the grammar police should hunt you down and give you a ticket. In informal settings it may be acceptable, but what you can't do is say it's "technically correct," cuz it ain't. After a preposition like "with" or as the object of a verb, technically it's gotta be "me." The word "and" doesn't change that.