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The world of sentences

A sentence is like theatre. Every member of a sentence plays a different role. So who are the actors and what roles do they play?

Let me introduce the actors: The Subject - Nominativ The Verb The Object - Accusativ

Let’s take a sentence like: Ich habe einen Hund I have a dog

Ich = Subject (Nominativ) The Subject (Nominativ) is like ‘actionman’. It is always doing the action

habe = Verb The Verb is the action itself, e. g. ‘playing’ or in our case ‘having’.

einen Hund Subject Object = Object (Accusativ) The OBJECT is the victim of the subject’s action. The SUBJECT is always doing something to the OBJECT!!!!

Now look what happens to the word ‘a’ in the following two sentences.

Subj. Verb Subj. Rover ist ein Hund Subj. Verb Obj. Ich habe einen Hund

Have you noticed…. . ? l ‘ein Hund’ in sentence 1 changes to l ‘einen l Hund’ in sentence 2. THIS IS BECAUSE ‘einen Hund‘ IS THE OBJECT (Accusativ) OF THE SENTENCE!!!!

The good news……. . This change only happens to masculine (blue) nouns

Subj. Verb Obj. Ich habe einen Hund eine Katze ein Kaninchen -- Haustiere

Now try and find out which role the English words play: Subj. has Verb ah amster Obj. my mot her

Subj. my mother Verb has Obj. a hamster

Subj. meets Verb l e a h c i M Obj. his frie nd

Subj. Michael Verb Obj. meets his friend

Now try the same with a German sentence: Subj. Verb Obj. eine r e d u r mein B n F isch hat

Subj. Mein Bruder Verb hat Obj. einen Fisch

Subj. Hau stie re Verb du Obj. hast

Subj. Verb Obj. Du hast Haustiere

Remember…. . After the verb ‘haben’ you always need an OBJECT. If the OBJECT is masculine ‘ein’ becomes ‘einen’!

Subj. Verb Obj. Ich habe einen Hund Hamster Wellensittich Fisch eine Maus eine Katze eine Schildkröte ein Kaninchen ein Pferd ein Meerschweinchen -- Haustiere