Thread: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative Cases

Ok, I understand nominative; it's the subject (from what it looks like). However, genitive, dative, and accusitive I am having a little trouble differentiating. Any help?

Alright, looking further, it is looking like the genitive case is kind of like a possessor noun sort of like "This is Maria's (her) book," and the dative case is the object of what the subject is doing with the verb. However, how is this different from the accusative? I am confuzzled (confused, it's way too late tonight, haha).

Further, when do you use the dative over the accusative case and vice-versa?

Generally, the accusative object is the direct object, whereas a dative object is an indirect object. In the sentence 'I give the book to the man' the object on which the action is directly performed is 'the book', and that would be in accusative case, whereas the man is not acted upon but is the recipient of the action, which means he would be in dative case if English had a case system like Russian or German.

An example: in Russian you say дай мне ..., 'give me ...'. Мне is dative. The person saying this wants to get something. Дай меня ... would mean 'give me (e.g.to someone)', so the person speaking is not the recipient but what is being given.

Robin