German Nominative Case (der Nominativ)

When learning German, one of the first challenges you’ll encounter is understanding the German case system. In German, there are four cases: Nominative (Nominativ), Accusative (Akkusativ), Dative (Dativ), and Genitive (Genitiv). For the sake of this lesson, we’ll focus exclusively on the nominative case.

What is the German Nominative Case?

The nominative case is used to identify the subject of a sentence. In simpler terms, it points out who or what is performing the action. In English, the nominative case is also known as the subjective case.

Table 1.1 shows the cases and their roles in German:

Case	Role	Description
Nominative	subject	takes action
Accusative	direct object	receives action
Dative	indirect object	to/for whom action is taken
Genitive	possessive	indicates the owner of someone or something

In English, grammatical cases are far less distinct than in German. Essentially, English has two overarching cases: the subjective (akin to the nominative in German) and the objective (which encompasses functions similar to both the accusative and dative in German).

The nominative case, or as it’s termed in English, the subjective case, represents the basic form of a noun. It’s the form you’ll typically find when you look up a word in the dictionary. This case is used for subjects in sentences — that is, the person, animal, or thing carrying out the action of the verb.

For example: “She reads the book.” Here, “She” is the subject performing the action. In contrast, in a sentence like “The book belongs to her,” the word “her” would be in the objective case in English.

🇩🇪 Die Katze schläft.
🇺🇸 The cat is sleeping.
🇩🇪 Frau Müller fliegt nach London.
🇺🇸 Mrs Müller is flying to London.
🇩🇪 Das Kind spielt mit dem Hund.
🇺🇸 The child plays with the dog.

Nominative with Special Verbs

Apart from indicating the subject of a verb, there are a few verbs in German that take a predicate in the nominative case. This means that both the subject and the object of these verbs are nominative. Some of these verbs are shown in Table 1.2:

sein	to be
werden	to become
heißen	to be named
scheinen	to seem
bleiben	to stay, remain

🇩🇪 Johann scheint ein großartiger Turner.
🇺🇸 Johann seems a great gymnast.
🇩🇪 Ich heiße Thomas.
🇺🇸 My name is Thomas.
🇩🇪 Thomas ist ein guter Lehrer.
🇺🇸 Thomas is a good teacher.
🇩🇪 Thomas bleibt ein Lehrer.
🇺🇸 Thomas remains a teacher.
🇩🇪 Mein Sohn wird ein Arzt.
🇺🇸 My son is becoming a doctor.

Articles in the Nominative Case

In German, articles change according to grammatical gender and case. In the nominative case, the articles are shown in Table 1.3:

Masculune	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
der	die	das	die
ein	eine	ein	✖️

In summary, the nominative case in German is essential for identifying the subject of a sentence or the predicate noun associated with certain verbs. As you advance, you’ll also get to learn how the other cases function in the language.