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This being the first post about grammatical cases, here is a brief intro….  Grammatical cases can initially seem like intimidating linguistic gunk for native English speakers or those with a background solely in the Romance languages.  One of the more romantic aspects of the Romance languages is that fact that grammatical cases have somehow disappeared from them over the years.  If you are a beginning student in a language where you are encountering grammatical cases for the first time, it will feel a bit like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VASm27lHJc).  Maybe it’s German, maybe it’s Russian, maybe it’s Sanskrit….  Either way, you better understand when to change words into different forms depending on the case you should be using.

Accusative Case: Alright, you wouldn’t say this, “How dare you hit I with that noodle!”  You would, of course, use “me.”  I’m not saying that English definitely has an accusative case, I think it’s more complicated than that in our language.  But this example can help one understand when to use the accusative case in languages that have it.  It’s typically used to mark the direct object of the verb.  If you’re not sure what a direct object is, it answers the question “What?” with respect to the verb.  Hit what?  Me.  “I remembered the answer.”  Remembered what?  The answer.  The component that answers the question “What?” would have to be altered to the accusative case.  It’s not hard at all to remember what the accusative case is….how about this….a sentence with “accused” in it to help you remember accusative case; doesn’t get any more obvious than that.  “He accused the dog.”  Accused what?  Yes, “the dog” would have to be transformed into accusative case in a language that requires it.  No more dwelling on this topic.  You know what accusative case is now.  I’m going to stop typing and go back to hoping that someone actually stumbles on these blog posts.

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