3 ms·
I grew up in Germany but haven't lived there for almost 45 years. I pride myself in still being fluent. And yet, this resonates. Nominative--Mein gutER Freun
by MarkusWandel 1y ago
I grew up in Germany but haven't lived there for almost 45 years. I pride myself in still being fluent. And yet, this resonates.
Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend.
Genitives--MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend.
Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.
Typing German in an email or Whatsapp, sometimes I get these details wrong and sometimes (shame!) I have to try a Google Translate from English.
The other thing he makes fun of isn't that strange. Splitting "Abreisen" for example (to depart) is natural because it's a compound word in the first place. And more over, in the example, the admittedly funny "De .... [flood of words] ... parted" it's not even one word, it's two (reist ab). German does lend itself to gratuitous nesting of sentences, but that doesn't mean that good German has to.
- wqpfofo 1y agomoreover, haha.
- lucb1e 1y agoThe first and the last are the same (nominative, accusative). Do they mean the same in German also? Surely you can't just swap one out for the other?
- School-Cotton 1y agoNominative is used for subjects and accusative for direct objects. In “I bit the dog” or “the dog bit me”, “I” is nominative whereas “me” is accusative.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- MarkusWandel 1y agoContext. "Mein guter Freund" works in the context "he is my good friend". "Meinen guten Freund" works in the context "I like my good friend". You don't actually learn all those grammar rules as such (what the heck is "accusative" anyway), you just pick all this up by actually using the language.
- MarkusWandel 1y agoSimilarly "Meines guten Freundes" works in the context of "the house of my good friend" and "Meinem guten Freund" works in the context of "I offered a beer to my good friend".