Learn about the genitive case in German
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Intro |
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| Michael: How important is the genitive case in German? |
| Igor: And can I replace it with the dative case? |
| Michael: At GermanPod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation, Beathe Bauer and Benjamin Bauer are talking about the neighbors during their morning coffee when Beathe asks, |
| "Is she his friend's daughter?" |
| Beathe Bauer: Ist sie die Tochter seines Freundes? |
| Dialogue |
| Beathe Bauer: Ist sie die Tochter seines Freundes? |
| Benjamin Bauer: Ja, sie ist die Tochter von seinem Freund. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Beathe Bauer: Ist sie die Tochter seines Freundes? |
| Michael: "Is she his friend's daughter?" |
| Benjamin Bauer: Ja, sie ist die Tochter von seinem Freund. |
| Michael: "Yes, she is his friend's daughter." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael:The genitive, also called the, |
| Igor: Kausus der Gebildeten |
| Michael: Or in English, the "case of the educated," is the second of the four cases you can find in the |
| German language and is usually used to express possession. So for instance, you could hear the genitive in expressions like, |
| Igor: Der Name des Mannes |
| Michael: Meaning "the man's name," or |
| Igor: Die Jacke des Mädchens, |
| Michael: Translating into "the girl's jacket." Today this case is losing on its importance and people tend to replace phrases such as |
| Igor: Der Name von dem Mann |
| Michael: With |
| Igor: Der Name des Mannes. |
| Michael: This is because the genitive can substitute for the dative in most cases. But this happens mostly in the spoken language. Written and especially formal German, used by institutions, still conform to the traditional use of the genitive. You'll learn more about that later in this lesson. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: But first, let's take a closer look at the dialogue. Do you remember how Beathe says "Is she his friend's daughter?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Igor: Ist sie die Tochter seines Freundes? |
| Michael: Let's focus on the ending of this sentence |
| Igor: Tochter seines Freundes |
| Michael: This expression contains the genitive. You can identify the genitive form the -s ending of the possessive article |
| Igor: Seines |
| Michael: And the -s ending of the noun |
| Igor: Freundes |
| Michael: Usually masculine and neuter nouns and their possessive pronouns or indefinite articles get the -s ending which indicates that the genitive has been used. |
| Let's modify this example a bit, and let's change |
| Igor: Seines |
| Michael: to |
| Igor: Eines |
| Michael: The whole expression would be |
| Igor: Die Tochter eines Freundes |
| Michael: Which translates literally as "the daughter of a friend." |
| In this example, we used an indefinite article, and as you can hear it also gets the -s ending, exactly like the possessive article |
| Igor: Meines |
| Michael: Before. As for feminine nouns, there is no unique ending which would help you to recognize the genitive in the sentence. The feminine nouns are always preceded by the definite article |
| Igor: Der |
| Michael: Or the indefinite article |
| Igor: Einer |
| Michael: Or one of the possessive pronouns |
| Igor: Meiner, deiner, seiner |
| Michael: So for instance, if we take our previous example "the name of the man" and exchange the masculine noun |
| Igor: Mann |
| Michael: for the feminine noun |
| Igor: Frau |
| Michael: The sentence would sound as follows, |
| Igor: Der Name der Frau. |
| Michael: You can exchange the definite article with an indefinite article or a possessive pronoun. |
| These forms are identical with the dative forms, so it's relatively difficult to recognize at first sight which cause has been used for the sentence. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: Now let's take a look at our second sentence. Do you remember how Benjamin Bauer |
| says "Yes, she is his friend's daughter." |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Igor: Ja, sie ist die Tochter von seinem Freund. |
| Michael: Did you hear The only difference in the latter one is that the dative was used? This sentence literally means "Yes, she is the daughter of his friend." |
| As mentioned before, the dative can cover almost all functions of the genitive, and people tend to use the dative, such as in the expression |
| Igor: Meinem Vater sein Hut |
| Michael: Meaning "My father's hat," or |
| Igor: Der Hut von meinem Vater |
| Michael: Meaning "The hat of my father." Instead of the genitive case, or |
| GERMAN HOST: Der Hut meines Vaters. |
| Michael: Translating into "My father's hat." The experts suggest it might be because the German speakers themselves have difficulties recognizing the stem noun after adding the genitive suffix -s. That's probably why people tend to prefer the dative, which doesn't have any specific endings that would change the stem noun. |
| Also for the genitive, especially with loan words the ending started to disappear nowadays. Let's analyze the phrase, |
| Igor: Benutzer des Internets |
| Michael: Meaning "the user of the internet." You might come across a slightly different version of this phrase where the -s ending is missing, namely |
| Igor: Benutzer des Internet. |
| Michael: You are likely to find it in written language and formal documents, and rather than a mistake, it's proof that the German language evolves. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: So far we learned that the genitive is expressing possession and is indicated by the -s endings for masculine and neuter nouns. For feminine nouns, the genitive form is identical with the dative. |
| We also learned that the genitive can be replaced by the dative very easily. |
| To develop a better understanding of how the dative can replace the genitive we'll look at some examples. Our first example is |
| Igor: Der Freund meiner Schwester |
| Michael: Meaning "My sister's boyfriend." This is the genitive relating to the feminine noun "sister." |
| You can see the genitive if you look at the possessive pronoun |
| Igor: Meiner |
| Michael: Which has the ending -r recognized as the feminine ending for Gentive. Now to get a feeling for how to distinguish it from the dative, listen to how we changed the sentence, |
| Igor: Der Freund meiner Schwester |
| Michael: Meaning literally "The boyfriend of my sister." Or |
| Igor: Meiner schwester ihr Freund |
| Michael: Literally meaning "My sister her boyfriend." Could you hear how different the sentence structure is in all three cases? Usually the shortest sentence will indicate the genitive. |
| Our next example will be masculine, "Have you ever heard of Goethe's book "The Sorrows of Young Werther?" |
| Igor: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. |
| Michael: Werther is the protagonist of this book, and a male, so he'll be treated as a masculine noun. |
| How would this book title sound in dative? |
| Igor: Die Leiden von dem jungen Werther. |
| MICHAEL: Meaning literally "the sorrows of the young Werther." Or |
| Igor: Dem jungen Werther seine Leiden. |
| Michael: Literally "young Werther's his sorrows." And our last example is a neuter noun. |
| Igor: Der Wert des Geldes |
| Michael: Meaning "the Money's value." If we put it into the dative the sentence will sound like, |
| Igor: Der Wert von dem Geld |
| Michael: literally "The value of the money" Or |
| Igor: Dem Geld sein Wert. |
| Michael: Meaning literally, "the money its value." Did you hear how for masculine and neuter examples the sentence dropped the -s endings in the dative? |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: Do you remember how we referred to the genitive in the beginning of this lesson? |
| Igor: Der Kasus der Gelehrten |
| Michael: Meaning "the case of the educated." Indeed, somehow the genitive has this academic undertone, and many people would even call it old fashioned. To be honest, most of the sentences that had been used with genitive in the past, will be used with the dative nowadays. You won't hear, |
| Igor: Ich erinnere mich des letzten Sommers |
| Michael: Meaning, "I remember last summer." Instead you'd probably hear |
| Igor: Ich erinnere mich an den letzten Sommer. |
| Michael: Which means exactly the same, with the only difference of dative being used to create this sentence. This variant sounds way more natural and causal, while the genitive of this sentence sounds very posh and to native speakers, associated with aristocracy and old literature. |
| Expansion/Contrast |
| Michael: Speaking of the genitive going out of use. There are more and more phrases that are taken over by the dative, which were ruled by the genitive before. Let's take for instance, |
| Igor: Wegen dem Wetter |
| Michael: Meaning "because of the weather.," wouldn't sound off for most people, since this is how German people would use it in their daily conversations, |
| Igor: Wegen dem Wetter fahren wir nicht zum See. |
| Michael: Which means "because of the weather we won't go to the lake." |
| But if we would stick to the rules for the German language, this sentence would sound like, |
| Igor: Des Wetters wegen fahren wir heute nicht zum See, |
| Michael: Since for this sentence the genitive should be used. Languages are always evolving, and it's only natural, that even something seemingly essential like a whole case loses its importance. This happened for example to the locative case that existed in old indogermanic languages. Some languages like Russian still make use of this case, but languages like German eliminated this case by shifting its functions to all the other cases. |
| But don't worry, the genitive won't become completely extinct over the course of the next few years, but it might happen over the next hundred or more years. It took some few hundred years for the genitive to lose most of its functions, and what once was one of the most important cases in German was reduced to what it's now. But even so, genitive has not been given up completely in favour of the dative. |
| Igor: Trotz des Regens |
| Michael: Meaning "because of the rain," is actually a dative sentence and should sound like, |
| Igor: Trotz dem Regen. |
| Michael: As you can see, the genitive isn't giving up that easily! That's why you shouldn't give up on learning it. It's still a very important part of the German language, so if you want to use German correctly, and even more importantly if you want to sound smart in German, learn when and how to use the "case of the educated" correctly. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Igor: Tschüsschen! |
| Michael: See you soon!" |
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