Nomina und Pronomina - Noun and Pronouns - auf Deutsch
#2: der Akkusativ

Noun phrases in a German sentences are in one of four grammatical cases:

1. Der Nominativ - the nominative
2. Der Akkusativ - the accusative
3. Der Dativ - the dative
4. Der Genitiv - the genitive

We learned that noun phrases that are the subject of the German sentence are in the nominative case. These nouns do the action of the verb. Nominative case nouns are marked by indefinite and definite articles. The forms of these articles in the nominative case are as follows:

Nouns are in the accusative case in a German sentence when they are the direct objects of the verb, that is,

The subject (nominative case) does the action and the direct object (accusative case) is acted upon. In German, the direct object of the verb is almost always in the accusative case. Here is a list of verbs that typically take an accusative case object and a few examples of them in sentences. The sentence elements in red are in the accusative case (direct object). Next to them is a grammatical analysis of the accusative noun phrase:

verb that typically take an accusative case object. haben - to have besuchen - to visit kaufen - to buy schreiben - to write bringen - to bring spielen - to play machen - to do, make sehen - to see essen - to essen trinken - to drink

(m. = masculine, f. = feminine, n. = neuter, pl. = plural, acc . = accusative) Ich habe den Bleistift. - m.acc. Er besucht das Mädchen. - n.acc. Der Mann will die CD kaufen. - f.acc. Schreibst du am Sonntag eine Arbeit? - f.acc. Die Jugendlichen bringen die Colas. - pl.acc Trinkt sie einen Apfalsaft? - m.acc. Georg will die Show sehen. - f.acc.

Notice the articles in these accusative noun phrases. Compared to the nominative forms, the articles are different in only one instance - masculine nominative and accusative. Der nouns becomes den nouns in the accusative case. The feminine, neuter and plural articles remain identical in both accusative and nominative. Examine these forms:

	Maskulin	Feminin	Neutrum	Plural
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Accusative	den	die	das	die

And the indefinite articles:

	Maskulin	Feminin	Neutrum	Plural
Nominative	ein	eine	ein	meine
Accusative	einen	eine	ein	meine

The der/die/das forms all mean "the." The ein words all mean "a / an." There are even more forms of the definite article. We will examine these when we study the other three cases in German. Notice in the plural; there is no gender distinction, and the article "die" is used.

Study also the Possessive Adjectives. These useful words behave in exactly eh same as ein: the possessive adjective take the same endings as ein; hence we call them ein words.

A few exercises

Prepositions that govern the Accusative Case

There are in German 5 prepositions that govern the accusative case. Now, a preposition is an important word that relates one noun to another in either time and space. Here are some examples in English. The italicized words are the prepositions. The words in red are the nouns that are connected in either time or space by the preposition.

1. The man runs quickly out of the house.
2. the little girl in the school
3. The dogs played happily by the creek.
4. the horrible accident before movie theater
5. We all went to the ice cream parlor after school.

Go to the lesson on the 5 Accusative Case Prepositions in German.

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