Accusative Case / Der Akkusativ

prepositions in German -Accusative Case – Der Akkusativ

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The German accusative case is used when the noun/pronoun is the direct object of the sentence, that is, the person or thing affected by the action or the verb.

Endings in the Accusative case

Except for the masculine gender, endings in the accusative case are exactly similar to those in the nominative case.

Article	Masc-uline	Femi-nine	Neu-ter	Plu-ral
Definite	den	die	das	die
Indefinite	einen	eine	ein	–
Negative	keinen	keine	kein	keine
Possessive	meinen	meine	mein	meine

Personal Pronouns

Most of the personal pronouns make a change from the nominative case to the accusative case, as shown in the next table:

Singular Pronoun	Definition	Plural Pronoun	Definition
mich	me	uns	us
dich	you – informal	euch	you – informal
ihn/sie/es	him/her/it	sie	they
Sie	you – formal	Sie	you – formal

Accusative case after certain verbs

Nearly all of the German verbs that can take a direct object take the accusative, which is expected, as the accusative is the direct object of the sentence. Such verbs are called ‘transitive verbs‘.

Accusative case after certain prepositions

Certain prepositions always take the accusative case, no matter what position or role the noun plays in the sentence, and even if there will be more than one accusative noun within the sentence.

Preposition	Definition
bis	until
durch	through
für	for
gegen	against
ohne	without
um	around, at

Interrogatives in the Accusative Case – Der Akkusativ

In the accusative, the interrogative pronoun ‘wer‘ becomes ‘wen‘, and the interrogative ‘welcher‘ is declined according to the noun it’s attached to.

Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Accusative	welchen	welche	welches	welche

Examples

Here are a few example sentences in which the accusative nouns/pronouns are pointed out:

Ich kaufe einen Gürtel für meinen Vater – I’m buying a belt for my father
Er trinkt ein Bier – He’s drinking a beer
Ich habe keinen Hunger – I’m not hungry
Wir sind gegen die Idee – We are against the idea

see : prepositions in German