Auf jeden Fall

*Caveat: I busted out my German grammar book for this post and was partially inspired by a linguist known for his contributions to the realm of language and thought, so it might get a bit nerdy here.


By now I have mentioned on more than a few occasions my difficulties with the German language. Among pronunciation of umlauts, false cognates and Du or Sie, I’ve also alluded to the various articles (der, die, das) and using them correctly based on the sentence, which is to say, knowing when to use which case. 

What is a case? The case of a noun [car, boy, girl] or pronoun [it, he, her] depends on its grammatical function in a phrase. English and German make use of four cases: nominative (which indicates the subject of a verb), accusative (which indicates the object of a verb), dative (which indicates the indirect object of a verb) and genetive (which indicates possession). In German, case is defined on articles and adjectives of nouns, whereas in English it’s established either with word order, prepositions or pronouns.

To illustrate this let me give an example. Take the English sentence:
"The cat chased the mouse." In this sentence, the cat is the subject, chase is the verb, and the mouse is the object of the verb. This has a distinct meaning from:
"The mouse chased the cat"

In German, case is defined on both articles and adjectives of nouns. Take for example the German sentence:
"Das kleine Mädchen liebt den kleinen Jungen," (the little girl loves the little boy). I chose this sentence as it has both nouns and adjectives to give you an idea of what I mean. In this sentence, Das kleine (from the adjective klein, in the neutral [das] nominative form) Mädchen is the subject, liebt is the verb (from lieben), and der Jung is the object of the verb, which means it’s in the accusative case den Jung, which means the adjective ending must also be defined as we see in kleinen.

In building a sentence you combine a number of elements, depending on how the various elements of that sentence interact, various relationships are established. By and large, it’s the verb of a sentence that determines these relationships. If I may offer an automotive analogy; think of the verb like the chassis of a sentence to which other parts are attached. Wait, now she’s talking about verbs? Weren’t we just talking about nouns? I know, stick with me. By the way, all these rules of grammar may seem completely foreign, but the truth is you already know them, you just might not know that you know them, but whenever you speak you prove it. 

Take for example the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Whether or not a speaker of a language can explain the difference between the two, they can certainly show it whenever they speak. A transitive verb takes an object, for example: throw, send or buy. All of these verbs beg the question: what? That what is the object of the verb, as in I threw the ball, sent an email and bought a sweater. Intransitive verbs on the other hand, for example: smile, dine, and sleep, do not take an object (She smiled, we dined, they slept). Therefore you intuitively know that you can’t say I threw or we dined the pizza.

To move on to another case, in the English dative (which denotes the indirect object of a verb) construction you can say: “I gave a present to my mom,” where I is the subject, give is the verb, a present is the object of the verb give [it answers the question: what?] and my mom is the indirect object of the verb (the present is given to her). You can also say “I gave my mom a present.” In one sentence we have the prepositional dative and the other is known as double object dative. In this sentence, both versions express the same meaning. So then in an effort to generalize (as all learners of a foreign language try to do-how else do you generate your own sentences if you can’t formulate some kind of ground rules) you could imagine for this scenario the construction:
subject+verb+thing+to recipient= subject+verb+recipient+thing.

Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, English is a language of exceptions, not rules. There are plenty of idiomatic expressions and figurative speech that throw the proverbial wrench into the operation of attempting to generalize English grammar. For example, you can say Sam drove the car to New York but not Sam drove New York the car. Also it’s perfectly normal for me to say, “My students gave me a headache,” but not, “My students gave a headache to me.”

I mentioned earlier that English tends to indicate dative with pronouns or prepositions. Again, native speakers know this even though they might not know that they know it. Take for example the sentence: “I gave she a present.” You can sense the wrongness, right? The correct sentence is, “I gave her a present,” because: me, you, him, her, us and them are object pronouns and: I, you, he, she, we and they are subject pronouns.

So, let’s bring it back to German. I’ll cut to the chase and show you how this article/adjective thing looks when defining cases.

	Masculine (Mann=man)	Neutral (Kind=kid)	Feminine (Frau=woman)
Nominative	Der junge Mann	Das kleine Kind	Die schöne Frau
Akkusative	Den jungen Mann	Das kleine Kind	Die schöne Frau
Dative	Dem jungen Mann	Dem kleinen Kind	Der schönen Frau
Genetive	Des jungen Mann(e)s	Des kleinen Kind(e)s	Der schönen Frau

Like English, prepositions also play a role in the dative case. However, instead of the preposition itself being the marker of case, it’s the article (respectively adjective) of the noun that is indirectly affected by the verb that is marked by case. There are some prepositions that are always dative. For example the German preposition von (from) is always followed by a dative, as in “Sie kommt vom Bahnhof,” (She’s coming from the train station), Sie (she) kommt (from kommen) vom (von+dem [Bahnhof is masculine, in the dative case der is dem]) Bahnhof (train station). Another preposition that is always followed by the dative is zu (to) as in: Sie geht zur Schule (She’s going to school), She (Sie) geht (from gehen) zur (zu+der [Schule is feminine, in the dative case die is der]) Schule (School). Other German prepositions always followed by the dative are:
aus (out), außer (except for), bei (near), gegenüber (across from), mit (with), nach (after), seit (since)

However German isn’t without its charming exceptions as there are a number of prepositions which depending on how they are used in the sentence (or more specifically, what they convey) can be followed by either the dative or the accusative case. To determine which case one must ask the question: Wohin (where to?) or Wo (where?). To illustrate an example with the German preposition an (on), consider the difference between:
"Ich hänge das Bild an die Wand," (I hang the picture on the wall [wall, feminine accusative]) and, "Das Bild hängt an der Wand," (The picture hangs on the wall, [wall, feminine dative]). Hinter (behind) is another preposition that goes both ways, as in:

"Er bringt das Fahrrad hinter das Haus," (He brings the bike behind the house, [house, neutral accusative]) and, "Das Fahrrad steht hinter dem Haus," (The bike is behind the house, house neutral dative). Other prepositions that can be accusative or dative are:
auf (on), in (in/to), neben (next to), über (above), unter (under), vor (before), zwischen (between). In these cases it becomes necessary to begin thinking (as a non-native speaker of German) of sentences on a more micro level, which involves discerning between the physical movement or location of a noun in relation to the other parts of a phrase. This may help to make the dative or accusative question a little clearer.

To return to the idiomatic expressions in English that were wrenching up our generalization of grammatical constructions:
give the x to the y can be understood as cause x to go to y, and
give the y the x can be understood as cause y to have x

In both cases, the thing that is affected is expressed as the direct object (the noun after the verb). When dissecting these exceptions you also have to consider the verb, and ask: does it specify a motion or a possession change? For example to give something involves both causing something to go and causing someone to have. Drive, however, only causes something to go as in the example sentence New York cannot have the car, which explains why we say, “Sam drove the car to New York,” instead of, “Sam drove New York the car,” and, “My students gave me a headache,” instead of, “My students gave a headache to me.” When you think of the event as causing the car to go somewhere, something is done to the car, so you say, “Sam drove the car to New York,” and when you think of the event as cause someone to have something, something is being done to someone, and to give someone a headache causes them to have the headache, but it isn’t that you physically take the headache and put it in someone else’s head, therefore you express it as, “My students gave me a headache.”

If you’re still reading by now, thanks for indulging me in my obsession (or could I say: for indulging me my obsession? No? Ok, I'll stop) with dissecting and analyzing seemingly banal aspects of language. It’s what I do! I can't end the post without giving credit to my inspiration.