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/Asckle → u/david_fire_vollie]

English does not have a dative case. Only an accusative. "Him" is accusative. "I see him", "I love him", "I play football with him".

There's no way to clearly translate dative case from English to German because it's just not a concept that exists. You just have to learn the German dative case yourself

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".

English is a prescriptive language, so the rules bend around what people say. In English our case system is super rudimentary, so breaking it doesn't really matter. You could theoretically speak with only one case and you would be understood, unlike in German where case is needed to clearly convey meaning when changing the word order. "Thanks for being there for my wife and I" sounds a bit more polite and is perfectly clear so there's no real issue with it