German Cases & Adjectives

Exercises:

Below you will find tables and explanations regarding the use of the four German cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive & Dative). In order to be able to use these tables correctly, it is important for you to know the gender of the German nouns you learn (German nouns can be feminine, masculine or neuter). Knowing the gender means that you know which article to use in the table. Articles change depending on which of the four the cases is being used.

German adjectives are learned in their simple form (alt, jung, laut, klein), but become influenced by various factors when used in a sentence. These factors include the gender of the noun they are describing, and the case that is applied to them (depending on the context of the sentence). These changes involve adding certain endings to the adjectives, which are marked in the tables below in bold.

Nominative Case

Definite Article:

The nominative case in German is used for the subject of the sentence. The subject of the sentence is the person or thing doing something. For example:

Der Hund isst das Brot. – [The dog eats the bread]

Der alte Hund isst das Brot. – [The old dog eats the bread]

Who is doing the action in this sentence? The dog. This makes “Der Hund” the subject of the sentence, meaning that the article belonging to “Hund” (der because it is a masculine noun) and any adjectives describing “Hund” (alt) must comply with the rules for the nominative case. These rules can be seen in the table below:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
der	die	das	die
der alte Hund	die kleine Katze	das große Haus	die bunten Blumen

Indefinite Article:

The same rules apply if the subject of the sentence has an indefinite article (ein / eine / ein): For example:

Eine Katze trinkt die Milch. – [A cat drinks the milk].

Eine kleine Katze trinkt die Milch. – [A small cat drinks the milk].

The cat is doing the action (it is drinking the milk), so the article belonging to “Katze” (eine because it is a feminine noun) and any adjectives describing “Katze” (klein) will follow the rules of the nominative case:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
ein	eine	ein	keine
ein alter Hund	eine kleine Katze	ein großes Haus	keine bunten Blumen

No Article:

If the subject of the sentence has no article, the following changes happen to the adjective:

Frisches Brot schmeckt gut. – [Fresh bread tastes good].

The adjectives will take on the endings of the missing articles, as you can see in the following table:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
heißer Kaffee	kalte Milch	frisches Brot	warme Brötchen

**Note: The verb “sein” acts like an equals sign (=) in a sentence, which means that anything on the other side of “sein” is still in the same case as the subject:

Der Hund ist ein alter Freund von mir. – [The dog is an old friend of mine].

Both “Der Hund” and “ein alter Freund” are the subjects of the sentence because the dog is both; it is a dog and it is an old friend of mine. Therefore both nouns, their articles, and their adjectives must follow the rules of the nominative case.

Accusative Case

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
den	die	das	die
den alten Hund	die kleine Katze	das große Haus	die bunten Blumen

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
einen	eine	ein	keine
einen alten Hund	eine kleine Katze	ein großes Haus	keine bunten Blumen

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
heißen Kafee	kalte Milch	frisches Brot	warme Brötchen

Genitive Case

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
des	der	des	der
des alten Hundes*	der kleinen Katze	des großen Hauses*	der bunten Schuhe

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
eines	einer	eines	keiner
eines alten Hundes*	einer kleinen Katze	eines großen Hauses*	keiner bunten Schuhe

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
heißen Kaffees*	kalter Milch	frischen Brotes*	warmer Brötchen

Dative Case

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
dem	der	dem	den
dem alten Hund	der kleinen Katze	dem großen Haus	den bunten Schuhen*

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
einem	einer	einem	keinen
einem alten Hund	einer kleinen Klatze	einem großen Haus	keinen bunten Schuhen*

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
heißem Kafee	kalter Milch	frischem Brot	warmen Brötchen