What is a Noun?
Gender of Nouns
What is Case?
When to Use Each Case

What is a Noun?

A noun names a person, place, thing, or idea.

Lerntipp! How to identify a noun

Exercise 1: Identifying Nouns

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Gender of Nouns

In English, nouns can usually be divided into two large categories: persons and non-persons. Non-persons are usually neuter and, after we have first referenced them by calling them by name, we can use the pronoun "it" to refer to them. Persons are then subdivided into two smaller categories: males (he/him/his) and females (she/her/hers).

However, not all nouns in English fit into these categories. Ships and cars are often referred to as "she." And when we don't know if a new baby is a girl or a boy, we ask "what is its name?" This usage is similar to the usage of gender in German.

The gender of nouns refers to whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter. In English and in German certain suffixes or endings mark the noun as masculine, feminine, or neuter, i.e., actor vs. actress, Schauspieler vs. Schauspielerin. In English, this is the only marking, and we use the definite article the without respect to the gender of a word: the man, the woman, the child, the people. In German, gender is marked various ways:

• certain suffixes or endings.
• different forms of the definite article: der Mann, die Frau, das Kind, die Leute.
• changes in the case to show whether the noun is the subject, the direct or indirect object, or the object of a preposition.
• changes in the noun itself to indicate that it is being used a certain way.

  Lerntipp! How to determine the gender of a noun

  Lerntipp! How to learn the gender of nouns

  Exercise 2: Gender

  Exercise 3: Gender

  Exercise 4: Gender

Once you have learned the gender of nouns, you are only half way there. German has four cases in which an indefinite or definite article or pronoun changes (and sometimes the noun itself) to announce what role a noun is playing in the sentence.

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What is Case?

German has four different forms or cases for each noun and pronoun: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive. We can roughly equate nominative with the subject form, accusative with the direct object form, dative with the indirect object form, and the possessive with the genitive form.

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When to Use Each Case

The most common dictator of German case is the verb. When we select a verb, the verb determines how many nouns must occur in the sentence. For instance, think about the verb "eat." For "eat" to occur, there must be present an "eater" and something to be eaten. The "eater" role is in the nominative case and the "eaten" role is in the accusative. This particular pattern (Subject/Verb/ Accusative Object) is the most common pattern in the German language. Another example is the verb "give," which requires a "giver," (nominative), what is given (accusative), and a recipient (dative). Although there are not nearly as many verbs in this group as in the "eater/eaten" group, these verbs are used very frequently.

A second dictator of German case is the preposition. There are accusative prepositions (durch, für, gegen, ohne, um), dative prepositions (aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu), and genitive prepositions (anstatt, statt, trozt, während, wegen).

A third dictator of case is a combination of a preposition and accompanying verb. Two-way prepositions (an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen) allow either an accusative or dative to follow them, and the accompanying verb decides whether the case will be accusative or dative.

Exercise 5: Case

Exercise 6: Case

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