Lektion 3 - Lesson 3

Ein-Eine

Nominative case

The nominative case is usually used for a person or thing which is doing the action. This noun which is doing the action is the subject. There is always only one subject in a sentence therefore only one nominative case.

Accusative Case: 

The accusative case is usually used for a person or thing that is directly affected by the action. These nouns are called direct objects.

Ein Mann liest.

Eine Frau isst.

Ein Mädchen schreibt.

In all three sentences above we have only the nominative case because in each sentence we have a person (noun) who is doing some action (reading, eating, writing).

English you can say "a dog" or "the dog". When you use "the dog" then you refer to a specific dog, whereas "a dog" can be any dog. "The" is called a definite article and "a" is called a indefinite article.

In German there are three definite articles "der", "die" and "das" and three indefinite articles "ein", "eine" and "ein". You use them depending on the gender of the word you use them with.

For example the word for "house" in German is neuter, therefore you say "das Haus" if you are talking about a specific house or "ein Haus" if it's more general.

"Ein" is used for masculine words, "eine" for feminine words and "ein" for neuter words.

It is very hard to determine the gender of a noun just by looking at a word.