Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly use the accusative case for the direct object of a sentence, including the genuinely important detail about which articles actually change.

Lesson Explanation

German has four grammatical cases; the accusative marks the direct object — the thing directly receiving the verb’s action. Building on Part 1, Lesson 5’s nominative articles:

Nominative → Accusative:
der → den   (masculine — the only definite article that changes)
die → die   (feminine — unchanged)
das → das   (neuter — unchanged)
ein → einen (masculine indefinite — changes)

A genuinely important, specific point: only the masculine forms actually change in the accusative — feminine, neuter, and plural stay identical to their nominative forms. This means the accusative case is only genuinely “visible” through the article when the noun is masculine.

Example: Ich sehe den Mann. (I see the man.) — der Mann becomes den Mann specifically because it’s the direct object here. Recall from Part 3, Lesson 4 that es gibt also requires this same accusative case.

Practice Questions