Welcome to this deck on the German dative case. The dative case is used to show who or what is indirectly affected by an action, often called the indirect object. Think of it as the 'receiver' in a sentence. We'll cover how articles and pronouns change in the dative, and which prepositions always require it.

First, let's understand the indirect object. In the English sentence, 'I give the book to the man', 'the man' is the indirect object because he is receiving the book. In German, this receiving noun is put into the dative case. The sentence becomes 'Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch'. 'Dem Mann' is in the dative case.

Now let's look at how definite articles, meaning 'the', change in the dative case. The masculine article 'der' changes to 'dem'. For example, 'the man' is 'der Mann', but if you help the man, you say 'Ich helfe dem Mann'.