If you’re new to language learning, you may not know, but prepositions are the jerks of the parts of speech family. They include (but are not limited to) the words for:
above, across, after, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beside, besides, between, but, by, down, during, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, outside, over, past, save, since, to, through, throughout, under, until, upon, with, within, without.
Each language has different prepositions to go with different phrases. In English, you would say, “I stayed with my Aunt.” or “I stayed at my Aunt’s.” In German, you would say, “Ich war bei meiner Tante”– which literally translates to “I was by my Aunt.” For this reason it is very important to learn the correct prepositional phrases. This website is a nice resource to see exactly how some of the more common prepositions function, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page that this link takes you to, it will show you a list of verbs that have a specific preposition attached.
However, in this post I want to focus on the different effects that German prepositions have on pronouns, nouns (and their adjectives) rather than the specific pairings of verbs and prepositions.
Certain prepositions will always render their pronoun’s or noun’s case (and attached adjectives) accusative, dative or genitive.
Memorizing this chart will give you an easy boost to improving your German grammar, as the accusative and dative prepositions are rather common. The genitive prepositions that I have listed in the first column (“anstatt” through “wegen”) are the ones that I have found to be the most useful in my normal German interactions. Genitive prepositions can usually be avoided altogether by using other phrases to communicate the same meaning, but nothing says that you can’t whip one out and “wow” your native speaker friends with one if the opportunity arises (My favorite is “trotz”).
Our understanding of nominative, accusative and dative tells us that in the sentence:
I bought my daughter the car.
“I’ is nominative, “the car” is accusative, and “my daughter” is dative.
If we add the preposition “for” (“für”) and change the sentence to:
I bought the car for my daughter.
“I” is nominative, “the car” is accusative, and the use of the preposition “for” (“für”) renders the noun “my daughter” accusative instead of dative. No matter what, the noun (or pronoun, and the attached adjectives) after an accusative preposition, they will be accusative. The same goes for dative and genitive prepositions respectively.
You will notice that there are many other prepositions that I have not listed for you in the chart above. *Most* of these prepositions fall into a fourth category known as 2-way prepositions (I say “most” because I cannot find an exhaustive list of genitive prepositions anywhere!). As the name implies, 2-way prepositions can render the subsequent noun or pronoun’s case (and attached adjective’s cases) either accusative OR dative. So, how to decide? Unfortunately you can’t just pick one and run with it. Knowing which case is appropriate to use depends on the situation your sentence is describing:
- If your sentence’s preposition is detailing information about “where to,” then the accusative case is used.
- If your sentence’s preposition is detailing information about “where,” then the dative case is used.
I remember these relationships because the phrase “where to” has more letters than “where,” just like “accusative” has more letters than the word “dative.”
Let’s explore an example set of situations:
- I am getting in the car.
- I am in the car.
The first sentence is answering the question “where to” by telling where I am going: into the car. The second sentence is answering the question “where” by telling you where I am. So the German equivalents would look like:
- Ich gehe in das Auto –or– Ich gehe ins Auto.
- Ich bin in dem Auto.
Another way teachers may tell you to interpret the correct case is by considering if there is motion or no motion involved. In the first car example, I am “getting in(to)” the vehicle, whereas in the second car example I am already “in” the vehicle. Just don’t let this fool you. If we had a sentence like,
“The children are playing soccer on the street,”
there appears to be motion (playing), however the prepositional phrase isn’t really connected to this motion. The prepositional phrase is acting as additional information about the motion and isn’t part of the motion itself (It is answering the question “where” rather than the question “where to”).
I have also devised my own method for discerning the proper case. I will visualize a cameraman filming my sentence: if to capture the essence of my sentence he’d be filming a close up of me (or who or whatever) doing something, chances are it’s the accusative case; if to capture the essence of my sentence he’d have to set up a whole scene (a “where”), chances are it’s the dative case. It’s not foolproof, but it helps me when I get stuck on sentences like, “The children are playing soccer on the street.”
Why be so difficult? It helps to clarify what’s going on using grammar instead of extra vocabulary. I’ll blame it on the stereotypical German need for efficiency at all times, including in their language.
A few good examples of this “efficiency” are:
- Ich skilaufe auf den Berg.
- I am skiing (to where?) down the mountain.
- Ich skilaufe auf dem Berg.
- I am skiing (where?) on/at the mountain.
- Ich gehe in den Laden.
- I walk (to where?) into the store (from the parking lot).
- Ich gehe in dem Laden.
- I walk (where) in the store (browsing the aisles).
The entire meaning of the sentence changes with just 1 letter.
The last monkey wrench I’ll throw at you is the set of instances wherein the prepositional phrases don’t serve a “where” or “where to” purpose. One such phrase is, “thinking about.” In German, the verb “denken” which means “to think” can be followed by the prepositions “an” or “über.” These words are followed by the accusative when they are used to mean “about.”
If we were to say, “denken an” followed with dative, it would be understood to mean “thinking atop” (and “denken über” followed with dative would be understood to mean “thinking above”). This difference would be very important if you were trying to tell someone “Ich denke an dich” (accusative, meaning “I think about you”) versus “Ich denke an dir” (dative, meaning “I think on top of you”), because that could get really awkward, really quickly!
However, not all prepositions that translate to “about” from German to English are followed by the accusative case; it is only true with 2-way prepositions! The phrase “dream about” in German is “traumen von,” and as we learned from the chart at the beginning, “von” is ALWAYS dative. Even if it means “about.”
There you have it! Good luck!