Hello everyone! In one of the topics that I posted I talked about gender of nouns in German and there I mentioned that it is important to know it, so you know which article to use. Here, I will talk about forms of definite article that should be used based on the sentence and case of the noun.

For a lot of learners cases are something completely new because not a lot of languages have cases. For example, Serbian language has even 7 cases, so maybe that will comfort you, because here are only 4 😃

Cases in German are:

nominative - subject

accusative - direct object

dative - indirect object

genitive - possession

Next to each case, I mentioned their most common use. Now, I will share the table that is useful to know, with forms of articles in all of the cases (next to a noun in some case goes the article that fits to its gender in the same case - I will share examples after the table)

Now, let's see some examples of cases.

The book is interesting. ---------- Das Buch ist interessant.

book: subject, so nominative

neutral, so we use nominative for neutral which is das

I saw the movie. ---------- Ich habe den Film gesehen.

movie: direct object, so accusative

masculine, so we use accusative for masculine which is den

I told father about you. --------- Ich habe dem Vater von dir erzählt.

father: indirect object, so dative

masculine, so we use dative for masculine which is dem

I met daughter of the neighbours. --------- Ich habe die Tochter der Nachbarn getroffen.

Here we had 2 nouns, so we will explain both of them.

daughter: direct object, so accusative

feminine, so we use accusative for feminine which is die

neighbours: "possession", so genitive

plural, so we use genitive for plural which is der

If this seems like a lot to memorize all at once, don't worry, once you start using it in sentences, you will get used to it! You can use the table in the beginning and slowly, before you even notice it, you won't need it 😃