This is a very brief introduction to the German nominative case with definite articles. The video is a sample lesson from my online course German grammar – the four cases where you can find out much more.
Every sentence, whether in English or in German, has at least a subject and a verb. For example in English ‘the man walks’ has the subject ‘the man’ and the verb ‘walks’.
‘The man walks’ in German is ‘der Mann geht’. Instead of the article ‘the’, the subject in German has the articles der, die or das depending on whether the noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. (If you wish to learn more about which nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter, check out my online course German gender #1 – German nouns and der, die & das using the coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off) The subject in any German sentence is called the nominative case.
- Der Mann sitzt. The man sits.
- Die Bank steht da. The bench is standing there.
- Das Kind schäft. The child is sleeping.
- Die Leute stehen. The people are standing.
These sentences (taken from the video) are very basic sentences and it’s highly unlikely that you will need or want to use such short sentences in German. But this is the basic structure you’ll need for German sentences.
The subject of a German sentence is a noun, with appropriate definite (der, die, das) article or indefinite article (eine, eine, ein) or a pronoun (ich, du, er, sie, es, wir, ihr, sie/ Sie – I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they).
The subject is the person or thing doing the action.
To find the subject, ask who or what is doing something.
That was easy, right?
If you think everything else is really difficult, think again, and maybe check out my online course German grammar – the four cases where I break down the German cases step by step, using further simple examples to make the rules clear. You’ll learn:
✔️ How to identify the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases
✔️ How to determine word roles (subject, direct/indirect object)
✔️ How to choose the right preposition
✔️ How to correctly use adjective endings
✔️ The logic behind German grammar—so it finally makes sense!
Check it out and don’t forget to use the coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off!
