What are cases in German and how are they used.

There are 4 cases in German but for GCSE we only need to focus on the nominative, the accusative and the dative. Cases are mostly concerned with nouns, which are objects such as 'the ball' and they change the way you write the article for the noun - the article is the word 'the' or 'a' that comes before the noun. Cases describe the function a noun has in a sentence. Firstly, the nominative case is used for the subject of the sentence, normally the thing or person doing the verb. The articles used in the nominative are der (for masculine nouns), die (feminine), das (neuter), die (plural). For example, in the sentence 'Der Mann schlägt den Hund mit dem Stock' (The man hit the dog with the stick), the man is the subject and takes der, because all the nouns in this sentence are masculine. The accusative case is used for the direct object in the sentence, the thing that is having the verb done to it. In terms of our example, the dog is the thing being hit (the verb) therefore it is in the accusative and takes den because the articles are; den (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter) and die (plural). Lastly the dative case is used for the indirect object, these are objects that are not being affected by the verb. In our example sentence this is the stick, because it is being used by the man; it is not the thing being hit. This means it takes dem because the articles for the dative case are; dem (masculine), der (feminine), dem (neuter), den (plural).