I know English and I am trying to learn German. Now while learning German my English grammar is on test. In German there are different words used when in Accusative Case. I don't know what that means. I checked Google and it says "The accusative case (abbreviated acc) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb." Next step: Googled Transitive Verb "a transitive verb is a verb that requires one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects" Now this sounds like some sort of Engineering and it's very complicated. I know English but practically I never pay attention if my Noun is in direct object and stuff. And I didn't understand what they said on Google. So, now I'm asking it over here. If you can explain me what is Accusative Case and Transitive Verb in simple words, I'd be very thankful to you. Please help. My German lessons are getting tough than it should be because of my lack of knowledge about these grammatical stuff.
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In English, the accusative case is, as you sort of learned from Googling it, is the objective case, the case that receives action of the verb. Simplest are very visual verbs like "hit" I hit her. Her is accusative or objective, receives the action from I, through the active verb hit.
Notice I said "through" the active verb verb, that means it was transized through it. So that verb hit is transitive, it moves action from the subject to the object. A non-transative verb can convey action without moving it to an object. Laugh is a good example. I laugh. We don't sit waiting for an objective like we would with a transitive verb like hit. I hit .... Some verbs can be both. Love comes to mind. "I love." makes sense simply meaning I love without expressing whom. I love you uses the verb as transitive and requires the object you, that accusative pronoun we started out with. Note that you is the same in the accusative as it is in the nominative. You love you.
The easiest way to think about cases is using pronouns. The difference between the nominative (the subject of a sentence - the thing doing the verb) and the accusative (the object - the thing on the end of the verb) is the difference between I and me, or he and him. A couple of examples:
I like him. Like is a transitive verb: it has a nominative subject (I) and an accusative object (him).
I walk around. This is intransitive. There is a nominative subject (I), but no object.
The dog bit the man. Another transitive verb. If you were to replace the nouns with pronouns, you would see clearly that the dog is the nominative subject, and the man the accusative object - I bit him, for example, or he bit me.