Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to recognize the nominative case and explain its function as the subject case.

Lesson Explanation

German has four grammatical cases — nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive — a system almost entirely lost in English, but one that affects every article, every adjective (Part 1, Lesson 5), and many pronouns (Part 1, Lesson 3) in German. This lesson begins with the simplest case.

The nominative marks the subject of the sentence — who or what performs the action (Part 2, Lesson 1): Der Hund bellt. (“der Hund” is in the nominative, since it is the subject).

The nominative is also the case used after the verbs sein, werden, and bleiben (to be, to become, to remain), since these verbs equate the subject with an identity rather than transferring an action onto an object: Er ist der Lehrer. (He is the teacher — “der Lehrer” stays in the nominative, not the accusative, even though it follows the verb).

Nominative article forms: der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter), die (plural) — identical to the basic forms already learned in Part 1, Lesson 2, since the nominative serves as the “starting form” from which all other cases derive.

Practice Questions