In German, there are 4 such roles, or cases, which are Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive.
Nominative Case
Nominative is the case of the subject of the sentence, that is, the case of the noun performing the action of the verb. Simply think of the nominative as the ‘who’ or ‘what’ carrying out the action in the sentence.
- Der Mann schläft – The man is sleeping
Accusative Case
The accusative case is used with the direct object. Think of the accusative case as expressing the ‘whom’ or ‘what’ being affected by the verb.
- Die Frau liest ein Buch – The woman is reading a book
Dative Case
The dative case is used to indicate the indirect object. The indirect object is often the receiver of the direct object (to whom or to what the action is being done).
- Er schickt seinem Bruder einen Brief – He sent his brother a letter
Genitive Case
The last of the German cases is the genitive, which is used to indicate possession, that is, it indicates that one item belongs to the other. It’s similar to the English ‘apostrophe s’ (‘s)
- Das ist die Tasche meines Vaters – This is my father’s bag
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