What is the difference between mir and mich in german

Viele - How To Choose? When and how to use dass in German. Am Morgen vs. Recent Posts. Check out our new German Courses and learn German with only 5 Students per class. German Meinung vs. Happy Mother's Day in German. The existence of these forms is due to the principle of grammatical case inflection, which is e.

Genitive case in different functions. Another application of case inflection is the usage after prepositions which sometimes changes the exact meaning of the preposition in combination with a verb.

However, inflection in German is more complex than in English it used to be very similar in Old English Highly-rated answerer.

The one learning a language! Learn about premium features. Tired of searching? HiNative can help you find that answer you're looking for. Register for free. All of this you are seeing through the use of ich, mich, and mir. This is a grammar question, so I'll have to use some grammar terms to explain the matter, and I hope this is ok. The answer is that ich is a nominative case pronoun, and mich is an accusative case pronoun. Suffice it to say that the nominative case is used for the subject of a sentence the person or thing doing an action , and the accusative case is used for the direct object of a sentence the person or thing having an action done to it.

In the sentence I see him , I is the subject and him is the direct object. In the sentence He sees me , he is the subject and me is the direct object. To express these sentences in German, we have to make sure we put the pronouns in the correct case depending on whether they're the subject or the direct object. The nominative and accusative pronouns are among the very most commonly used words in German, so it's important that you practice them until they're second nature to you.

It's a lot to take in and memorize when you're just beginning with German, but with practice it will start making more sense. Also, as slamRN already mentioned, you'll eventually encounter mir in addition to ich and mich. Mir is the dative case pronoun, used for indirect objects. After you have mastered the nominative and accusative cases, then you can tackle the dative case. My advice is to try not to take in too much new grammar all at once. However in German, mich is used for direct object of the sentence and mir is used for indirect object of the sentence.

Differentiating between these two is rather easy since indirect object in English tends to come after some sort of preposition such as "from", "to" and Example: "He gives the book to me" - "Er gibt mir das buch" Me is indirect in the sentence because it came after the preposition "to".

This is not an example of an indirect object in English. In your example, "me" is the object of the preposition "to". If you would like to use "me" and an indirect object, in English it would be "He gives me the book". In English, prepositions simply take an "object" and not a direct or indirect object. Also in English, the object of a preposition is in the objective case. In English, we do not have an accusative or dative case.

Thanks so much everyone for commenting, I understand so much more now!