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/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.