Mercury Chaos (mercurychaos) wrote in denglish_asylum, @ 2008-01-08 15:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | cases/fälle |
Cases in German and English. :D
(AKA, mercurychaos nerds about linguistics because she is bored.)
I know what you're all thinking now. "Huh? English doesn't have cases, does it?" Well, that's not completely true... English does indeed have cases, they're just hiding all ninjalike. This is mostly because a lot of the pronouns we use fell out of use or became similar over time, especially for accusative and dative: instead of having "ihn" and "ihm", we say "him" for both.
But the thing is, most native English speakers (at least, the ones I know) don't know this, and consequently use "whom" incorrectly... and not only does this make you sound silly, but knowing and recognizing cases in English makes it easier to learn them in German.
An easy way to remember when to use "whom" is to remember whom you're talking about: he or him. (I am not using this to be sexist, but rather because both whom and him end with an M.)
"Who is at the door?" ("who" is the subject/nominative)
"Whom did you see?" (direct object/accusative)
"To whom do I send it?" (indirect object/dative)
Now the answers:
"He is at the door." (Who? He.)
"I saw him." (Whom? Him.)
"You send it to him." (Again, whom? Him.)
See the pattern? :D The same applies to feminine pronouns: who = she, whom = her. The who/whom, he/him, and she/her are all remnants of English cases.
So, English speakers, if you didn't know this already, now you do. I'm not suggesting that you start talking like this, but it's useful for learning cases in German. [In fact, German speakers should note that most people don't talk like this: unless you're writing a really formal paper, only the really strict English purists will correct you for using "who" when you should say "whom". But if we went by their rules we'd be saying really convoluted sentences like "Who's that guy with whom you are going out?" ;)]
Anyway, let's compare.
Nominative/Subject
English: who? he/she.
Deutsch: wer? er/sie.
Accusative/Direct Object
English: whom? him/her
Deutsch: wen? ihn/sie
Dative/Indirect Object
English: whom? him/ her
Deutsch: wem? ihm/ihr
Look at that last one. They kind of look similar, especially "him" and "ihm". It's like English and German are related or something ...oh wait. :D Remembering this helped me a lot with cases; in fact, I've found that the sooner you learn pronouns, the less time you will spend being confused about cases.Now, did this actually help anyone or am I just confusing you more? :D