The Ultimate Guide to understanding the German Accusative!

Did you start studying German? Now, you probably already met “Accusative”. German cases often unsettle students as they do not fully understand their meaning. After reading this article, you will be a pro in terms of “Accusative” and ready for our upcoming adventure called “Dative”.

German grammar – the cases

German sentences are built up by four cases. Depending on your first language or the ones you have already studied, it will be easier or harder for you to understand the concept of German grammar. However, you should know that you cannot (!) run away from studying the four cases (4 Fälle) if you wish to accomplish a higher level than A1. Also, you should know that once you have understood their idea, you have already won half the battle.

In the last article – The Ultimate Guide to understanding the German Nominative! – I discussed the concept of the first German case Nominative. As a quick reminder: Its role is to describe the subject – somebody or something that does something in the sentence.

Now, when we want to start building sentences that are a little more complex and include a second person or object besides the mentioned subject, we need to find a way to express the relation the issue has with this object. Therefore we use Accusative, Dative , and Genitive in German. In this article, we will only focus on Accusative as the other two cases will be relevant in the following two pieces of this article series.

Recommended study materials on the topic:

1. A-Grammar: Practice German grammar German (incl. answers)
2. B-Grammar: Practice German grammar German (incl. answers)
3. German self-study book for A1-B1 (incl. answers)
4. Accusative or Dative wheel
5. Endings of adjectives wheel

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The concept of Accusative

To understand when to use Accusative (Akkusativ), you need to internalize the following idea:

• It never does something itself, but moreover, something is done with it by the subject.

An example of Accusative:

Der Mann trinkt den Kaffee . – Subject + Verb + Accusative object

As you can see, the man is doing something with the coffee – he drinks it. Therefore the coffee becomes the direct object. As we learned in the first article of this series, you can ask for Nominativ by using “who” (wer). For Accusative, you can ask “whom” (wen). Also, in English, one would not ask, “Whom does the man drink?” as he drinks coffee, and therefore one would ask, “what.” Accordingly, in classical German Grammar, one can ask “was” (what) to find your subject, but unfortunately, you can also use “was” to find out the nominative case. While working as a German online teacher , I realized this is very confusing and will become even worse when adding Dative. As a result, I suggest using “wen” at the beginning for every Accusative object until you are more confident and, therefore, will not get lost within the cases.

For our example above, the question would be: Wen (was) trinkt der Mann?

And the answer would be: den Kaffee

Accusative verbs

Besides, there are several verbs which always ask for an Accusative object for instance: lieben, fragen, essen, kaufen, kennen, lernen, mögen, machen, möchten , kosten or hängen, legen, stellen, setzen .

Accusative prepositions

Above all, another possibility to realize that you need to use the Accusative case is prepositions. When you use the following prepositions, you can be 100 % sure you will have to use Accusative: bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne or um.

Genders in Accusative

As you have already learned, the German language offers its speakers three genders: male, female, and neuter, which all can be the Accusative object of your sentence. As you might have already realized, there are “den” and “einen” which somehow smuggled themselves into the story. Well, the male gender (der, ein) changes and becomes “den” and, accordingly “einen” which is the proper way to express the direct male object in a German sentence. In contrast, all the other genders stay as you already know them from Nominative. Remember: The “n” describes the male gender throughout the whole case – also, you ask “wen” to aks for the object.

The gender look as follows:

Similar as in English, there are also plenty of sentences in German, where the subject is not necessarily “the” something but “me” or “him”. These little words are called “Personalpronomen”.

Personal pronouns in Accusative

Finally, the last possibility to name a subject is the help of “Possesivpronomen” (possessive pronouns). As their name already reveals, they show the relation or respectively the possession of a noun. Again, only the male will change.

Possessive pronouns in Accusative

Accusative Overview

Summary of Accusative

• It is always the direct object of your sentence, and this can be:
  1. Name
  2. Noun (den Mann, die Frau, das Kind, die Autos)
  3. Personal pronouns (mich, dich, ihn, sie, es, uns, euch, sie, Sie)
  4. Possessive pronouns (mein/e/n, dein/e/n, sein/e/n, ihr/e/n, sein/e/n, unser/e/n, euer/e/n, ihr/e/n, Ihr/e/n)

Congratulations! Now, that you understood Accusative, you can start to build more complex sentences. In the next round, we will have a date with “Dative”.

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Генитив, датив или аккузатив

Употребление падежей в немецком и русском языках не всегда совпадает. Чтобы узнать, в каком падеже употреблять существительное или местоимение, следует сначала проверить, есть ли во фразе сигнальные слова (предлоги, глаголы или прилагательные, которые всегда употребляются только с определенным падежом), а затем, если таких слов нет, проанализировать структуру предложения (прямое дополнение стоит в аккузативе, положение в пространстве описывается дативом и т.п.).

Например: Ich gehe jetzt zu meinem Freund. Предложение содержит предлог zu, который всегда используется только с дативом → несмотря на то, что фраза выражает направленное движение, используется датив.
Ich gehe in die Wohnung meines Freundes. Предлог in не указывает однозначно на падеж, так как может употребляться и с дативом, и с аккузативом; направление → аккузатив.

Глаголы и предлоги с генитивом, дативом и аккузативом

sich einer Sache … brüsten, enthalten, rühmen, schämen, erinnern, erfreuen

(sich) legen
(sich) setzen
(sich) stellen
(sich) lehnen