Dative Case Master Class Notes

Before you learn the dative case, it is a good idea to learn about the accusative case. If you
haven’t already seen my master class on this topic, ​click here​. In the above slide, you can see
the definite and indefinite articles as used in the nominative and accusative cases along with a
very brief explanation of when to use the accusative case.

The first use of the dative case is when there is an indirect object in German. In order to use
that properly, you need to know what a in indirect object is. If you already know what a direct
Dative Case Master Class Notes

object is, you can define an indirect object as the person or thing that receives the direct object.
Alternatively, the indirect object is the person or thing that is indirectly affected by the verb.

In this slide we get a more precise definition of the term “indirect object” along with another
example in German. Hopefully the slide speaks for itself, as there is a lot of information already
written on there.

The definite articles have now been added to the definite articles chart. If you use the last letter
of all of the definite articles in each case in this order, you can use the mnemonic device “RESE,
Dative Case Master Class Notes

NESE, MRMN” to remember the last letter of the articles. I pronounce “MRMN” as “merman”,
but some of my students prefer to say “mormon” or “Mr. Man”.

The words at the bottom of this chart are meant to be an example of the words that act like
definite articles such as dieser, jeder, manche, etc.

Here are a few example sentences with definite articles and indirect objects. Don’t forget that
red is nominative, blue is dative and green is accusative.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

If you add adjectives between the definite article and the noun, you have to add an ending to fit
the case and gender. For definite articles, these endings are either -e or -en. In the dative case,
all of the endings are -en. Below are a few examples of adjectives in each case. I used the
same examples as before, but this time I used those words that act like definite articles in
addition to the actual definite articles.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Indefinite articles are a bit different than definite articles. Obviously, the meaning change from
“the” (definite articles) to “a/an” (indefinite articles) is a pretty significant one, but the difference
to which I am referring is that the endings don’t work for the “RESE, NESE, MRMN” mnemonic
in the nominative and accusative case. Luckily, the dative case still works.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

As with the definite articles, there are certain words that act like indefinite articles, too. In this
case the list includes all of the possessive articles and the negative article “kein”. The endings
for these words are the same as they are for the indefinite articles.

Adjectives after the indefinite articles (and the words that act like them) are also slightly different
from the ones after definite articles. You can see the differences in the nominative masculine
and the neuter forms for nominative and accusative. Again, all of the endings in the dative case
are -en. Below are a few examples of these adjective endings in practice.
Dative Case Master Class Notes
Dative Case Master Class Notes

If an adjective is not preceded by an article at all you use a different set of endings. These
endings are essentially the same as they are at the end of the definite articles, but the genitive
case differs slightly. For today’s lesson, however, they are the same as the definite article
endings, MRMN. Since it is difficult to build example sentences in the same way I have been, I’ll
reserve examples of these until after I teach you about dative prepositions.

The prepositions that always require the dative case are listed above. If you know the song “An
der schönen blauen Donau, Walzer” also known as “The Danube Waltz”, you can sing these
Dative Case Master Class Notes

prepositions with the exception of “gegenüber”. Below you will find an example sentence for
each of the prepositions and some non-preceded adjectives
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Certain nouns in German require an -n or -en at the end of the noun when they are not used in
the nominative case. These are always masculine nouns and they usually end with -e. There
are also a bunch of other ones that do not end with -e, but at least if it is masculine and ends
with -e it is a safe bet that it requires an -n in every case besides the nominative. Below are a
few example sentences with these words.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

There are some general rules to follow when trying to decide if a noun is weak or not (requires
-n or -en). The list of three rules above states it pretty succinctly.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Personal pronouns change for every case, too. As you can see in the chart above, all of the
dative forms of personal pronouns are different than they are in the nominative case. The chart
pretty much speaks for itself. Below are some examples of how to use them in sentences.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

The direct and indirect objects switch word order sometimes based on which one is a pronoun.
The dative case object (indirect object) usually precedes the accusative object (direct object). If
one of those objects is a pronoun, the pronoun goes before the other object. If both the direct
and indirect object are pronouns, the accusative one goes first. This is confusing at first, but is
quite simple after some practice.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Question words are pronouns, too. This is why the question word “wer” changes to “wen” in the
accusative and “wem” in the dative. If you are asking a question about the subject of the
sentence and that subject is a person, use “wer”. If you are asking a question about the direct
object of the sentence and the direct object is a person, use “wen”. If you are asking about the
indirect object and that indirect object is a person, use “wem”.

Reflexive pronouns are similar to the personal pronouns with one major distinction. The third
person singular and plural forms (er, sie, es and sie respectively) are now all “sich”. The formal
Dative Case Master Class Notes

you “Sie” also uses “sich”. These pronouns are used when the subject and the object are the
same person. If the object is the indirect object of the sentence (i.e. there is already an
accusative object in the sentence), you use the dative version of these pronouns. Usually it
doesn’t matter if the reflexive pronoun is accusative or dative, as the pronouns are mostly the
same, but for “ich” and “du”, you have to understand this difference. You can see this illustrated
in the examples below.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

There is really no such thing as a reflexive verb. There are simply verbs that are often used
reflexively. This distinction is important, because you can use all of the verbs usually listed as
“reflexive verbs” as non-reflexively. This is illustrated above.

This kind of sentence can also be made with verbs that are not reflexive, but instead just verbs
directed at people, such as the above examples.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Occasionally a verb will simply skip over the accusative case and instead use the dative case.
These are called dative verbs. These verbs are generally used with people, but do not have to
be used with people. This is illustrated through the examples above and below.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

The list above shows you commonly used dative verbs.

Verbs that are usually classified as dative verbs can be used with an accusative object, but that
is because they didn’t skip over the direct object. The above example shows you how this can
be done. The first one shows you the normal sentence that would be formed with the dative
case. You can reconstruct this sentence to use a direct object in addition to the dative object.
This makes it a simple sentence with a direct and indirect object. If you remove the indirect
Dative Case Master Class Notes

object, you are simply left with the accusative object, which is what happens in this example and
the one below.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

There is a special dative construction sometimes called the “dative of interest”. It is called this,
because it changes the perspective of the sentence from the normal subject to the object. This
is used with a specific list of adjectives. Some of them can be seen in use in the examples
above and below.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

The two-way prepositions use either the dative case or the accusative case. If you are
describing a constant location, you use the dative case. If there is a change in location
illustrated through the prepositional phrase, you use the accusative case.

Some teachers say that there are certain verbs that “require” the two-way preposition to take the
accusative or dative case. While I’m not a fan of the word “require” in that idea, they generally
do use the dative case with the verbs listed above. Below you will find a few examples of these
verbs in action.
Dative Case Master Class Notes
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Some verbs are commonly used with certain prepositions. These are often incorrectly called
“verbs with fixed prepositions”. They aren’t necessarily “fixed”, but are simply commonly used.
Some of these are dative prepositions, which makes choosing the case really simple such as in
the examples above.
Dative Case Master Class Notes

Other times you will see a two-way preposition used with a particular verb and the change in
location or state or lack thereof won’t be as easy to identify. In those cases, you simply need to
memorize which ones require dative and which ones require accusative. The examples above
and below illustrate this point.