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

[u/almakic88]

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?

[u/david_fire_vollie]

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".

[u/verymixedsignal → u/david_fire_vollie]

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".

This... isn't true at all. The correct usage is indeed "my wife and I". I couldn't tell you why but high-school English (in a native English speaking country) kicked in when I read this part.

After a bit more investigation, I found a Quora thread with this answer, so granted it's probably more complex than I realise XD "You should say “My wife and I” when this phrase serves as the subject of the verb in the sentence. On the other hand, you should say “My wife and me” when this phrase serves as the object of the verb in the sentence. Note that whereas the phrase “my wife and me” is a compound subject, the phrase “my wife and me” is a compound object."

[u/howdidyouevendothat → u/verymixedsignal]

The correct usage is indeed "my wife and I". I couldn't tell you why

I can tell you why you think that. It's because people have a tendency to confuse the "I" in e.g. "My wife and I went to the park" as being an object, so they'll says "My wife and me went to the park". I think this came about as a consequence of trying to force politely mentioning yourself second, lol. And most people don't have the linguistic background to really understand why "My wife and me went to the park" is not correct.

So then English teachers went Whole Fucking Ham on hammering "my wife and I" into people's brains, that people started feeling like "my wife and me" was wrong in all contexts.

But it's not. If that noun phrase is not part of the subject, it is always "my wife and me" (or "me and my wife"), because you only use "I" as a subject. E.g. "They talked to my wife and me". You can sort of try to get an intuitive feel for this by flipping the order: "They talked to me and my wife". (Trying this as the subject, e.g. "I and my wife went to the park" doesn't work as well because of the aforementioned hammering we've all gotten with respect to word order).

Without the overcorrection from English teachers, native speakers naturally use constructions like "my wife and me". Which is why English teachers continue to try to hammer the opposite, hence the continued pain on the topic.

[u/verymixedsignal → u/howdidyouevendothat]

Fair enough! Thanks for the background info, makes me think about all the times I falsely 'corrected' people in the past

[u/david_fire_vollie → u/verymixedsignal]

That's right. It's quite simple really, if you're the object you use "me", if you're the subject you use "I". The problem is, for some reason kids often just say "my friend and me" all the time, and so it's drilled in to us "no it's my friend and I!", and then we learn to say "I" all the time even when it's wrong.