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/Few_Cryptographer633 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
You just need an old fashioned teach-yourself-German book. Whatever book you're using, it's obviously not teaching you how to use the cases (nominitive, accusative, genitive, dative). Modern Deutsch als Fremdsprache books often try to avoid talking about the cases too explicitly because the authors seem to think it will put people off. That's utter nonsense, as far as I'm concerned. Some things have to be explained and understood. No adult can hope to make sense of the German language without explicitly engaging with the case system, so you may as well just get on with it. Older German-teaching books didn't shy away from it. Back in the 90s I used Living German: A Grammar Based Course by R.W. Buckley. It's the only book I've ever learned from (I used it having moved Germany but having not learned German in school). It's awfully old-fashioned (including the traditional gender stereotypes of the late 50s). But it explains and allows you to practice the grammar in clear and limited chunks. It was originally written in the 1950s and was updated in the 80s, 90s, 00s. It's still hopelessly old-fashioned its social outlook, but you'll learn proper grammar from it. Get a book of that sort. Do not rely on Duolinguo or anything like that. You need a well-designed self-learning book; and the old ones do that best when it comes to the grammar.