Today’s post is on the dreaded cases. For the German newbies, a case is a term used to describe the role a noun plays in a sentence.

There are four cases:

1) der Nominativ (the nominative) : is where the noun is the subject of the sentence. Let’s look at the nominative forms for the definite article in German.

1a) the nominative Männlich (masculine): der.

1b) the nominative Weiblich (feminine): die.

1c) the nominative Sächlich (neuter): das.

1d) the nominative Mehrzahl (plural): die.

2) The nominative indefinite articles have their endings as well:

2a) mas : ein

2b) fem : eine

2c) neu : ein

2d) plur : – (there is no plural in the indefinite form because ‘a/an’ by its very nature refers to singular things. That being said, you could use keine, which is the negative of eine to indicate the plural. An example of this is the sentence, He has no cars (Er hat keine Autos).

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