When I first started learning German, I remember discovering noun genders and thinking ‘OK, got it! Some nouns are masculine (der), some are feminine (die) and some are neuter (das). That’s not so hard. What’s all the fuss?!’
THEN, I started noticing that a noun I learned as masculine — for example, der Stein (stone) — was sometimes written in a sentence as den Stein, dem Stein, or even des Steines. Wait … WHAT?!
Sound familiar?
What ARE those differences about anyway?
Why would der sometimes change to den, dem or des?
Well, my friend, welcome to the wonderful topic of German Noun Cases.
So, what is case? What do the terms nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive mean?
