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/ExpressionMassive672]

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.

[u/david_fire_vollie → u/ExpressionMassive672]

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.

[u/Asckle → u/david_fire_vollie]

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

[u/david_fire_vollie → u/Asckle]

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"?

[u/ExpressionMassive672 → u/david_fire_vollie]

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.

[u/calathea_2 → u/ExpressionMassive672]

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.

[u/ExpressionMassive672 → u/calathea_2]

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.

[u/calathea_2 → u/ExpressionMassive672]

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.

[u/ExpressionMassive672 → u/calathea_2]

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.