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Some German verbs require the dative for their direct objects. Common examples are antworten (to answer), danken (to thank), gefallen (to please), folgen (to follow), glauben (to believe), helfen (to help), and raten (to advise). In each case, the direct object of the verb is rendered in the dative. For example: Meine Freunde helfen mir. (My ...
German has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. German is unusual among languages using the Latin alphabet in that all nouns are always capitalized (for example, "the book" is always written as "das Buch"). Other High German languages, such as Luxembourgish, also capitalize both proper and common nouns.
In nouns, the Old German instrumental was replaced with the dative in Middle High German, comparable with English and Ancient Greek, with a construction of mit (with) + dative clause (in English, the objective case is used). For example: "Hans schrieb mit einem Stifte*."
The gender matches the receiver's gender (not the object's gender) for the dative case, and the owner's gender for the genitive. Dative: Ich gebe die Karten dem Mann – I give the cards to the man. Genitive: Die Entwicklung unseres Dorfes – The growth of our village. For further details as to the usage of German cases, see German grammar.
A third group of prepositions, called two way prepositions, take either the accusative case or the dative case depending on the phrase's exact meaning. If the statement describes movement across a boundary then the phrase is accusative. Other situations, including movement within a confined area, take the dative case. For example: Ich schlafe ...
An example with the neuter definite article with the German word for "book". d as Buch ( nominative ) "the book" [as a subject] (e.g. Das Buch ist gut - the book is good) d es Buch (e)s ( genitive ) "the book's/ [of] the book" (e.g. Die Seiten des Buchs sind grün - the pages of the book are green)
The dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence using the dative case.A sentence is also said to be in dative construction if the subject and the object (direct or indirect) can switch their places for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure (subject becoming the new object, and the object becoming the new subject).
In letters, e-mails, and other texts in which the reader is directly addressed, familiar pronouns may be capitalized or not. In schoolbooks, the pronouns usually remain lowercased. Declension of the polite personal pronoun "Sie": Nominative case: Sie Accusative case: Sie Genitive case: Ihrer Dative case: Ihnen. Declension of polite possessive ...