Quackers
The Frog
1. Essentially what J said.
There are two rules that explain most applications of accusative vs. dative:
1) In a construction with a primary and secondary object the primary will be accusative, the secondary dative ("Ich gab dem Mädchen (sec.) den Ball (prim.)."First rule supercedes the second. There are exceptions, etc. etc.
2) Direction -> accusative, location -> dative
It's a recurring problem.
2. We are working hard on the elimination of the genitive (and general moronisation), so give us a break.
3. When you're a native speaker you don't think about this. You get it right 99.9999% of the time. You just do. And if you don't it's, like, absurdly embarrasing.
For second language speakers that's totally forgiveable or even cute, particularly if you're Anglospherian.
If you, like, care, about perception, i'd advise to err on the side of accusative in cases where you really don't know. Accusative instead of dative sounds way less derpy than the other way around.
PS:
And you're doing this in English too, btw. You do have an accusative and dative case in English, which is (usually*) reflected in prepositions and articles. You merely don't have flexions as markers.
*After having thought about it: Erm, yeah...or not.^^
Anywho, you still have the cases.
I appreciate the detailed explaination.
Via the unnatural progression of my german grammar book i'm looking at pluralisation now. A tad more straight forward than those cases /shudder.
Genau!
