A2 · The four cases
Verbs that take the dative
helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören
A short list of verbs whose only object is dative, where English would use a plain object.
At a glance
- Remember
- helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören — always dative.
- Form
- ich helfe dirI help you
- Signal words
- mir
- dir
- ihm
- ihr
- uns
- euch
- ihnen
- Ihnen
- Trap
- Wrong:Ich helfe dich.Right:Ich helfe dir.
Your turn
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The form
How the forms are built
Each row gives the meaning first, then the form in German. The colours show what changes from one form to the next.
stem (regular) stem (irregular) person ending
| I help you | ich helfe dir |
| you help me (du) | du hilfst mir |
| he, she, it helps us | er, sie, es hilft uns |
| we help him | wir helfen ihm |
| you help them (ihr) | ihr helft ihnen |
| they help her; you help her (Sie) | sie, Sie helfen ihr |
| danken | Ich danke Ihnen. |
| gefallen | Das Bild gefällt mir. |
| gehören | Der Schlüssel gehört ihm. |
| folgen, passen, antworten | Folgen Sie mir bitte. |
| gratulieren, begegnen | Ich gratuliere dir. |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is aboutThe word that calls for it
These verbs take a dative object and no accusative.
Kannst du mir helfen?Can you help me?
With gefallen, the thing liked is the subject.
Die Stadt gefällt uns.We like the city.
A dative object cannot become the subject of a passive.
Mir wurde geholfen.I was helped.
The everyday list is short enough to learn.
Ich danke dir für alles.Thank you for everything.
Example sentences
Er hat mir sehr geholfen.He helped me a great deal.
Das Kleid passt dir gut.The dress fits you well.
Sie hat mir nicht geantwortet.She did not answer me.
Wem gehört das?Whose is this?
Ich bin ihm gestern begegnet.I ran into him yesterday.
6 more example sentences
Wie geht es Ihnen?How are you?
Das Essen schmeckt mir.I like the food.
Ich gratuliere euch beiden.Congratulations to you both.
Folgen Sie bitte dem Weg.Please follow the path.
Diese Jacke gehört meiner Schwester.This jacket is my sister’s.
Glaub mir, das stimmt.Believe me, that is right.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
English "help someone" has a plain object, so the accusative feels obvious, and dich is what comes out. There is no rule to apply — helfen is simply one of the verbs in this group, and the group has to be learned as a list. The good news is that it is short and stable: the same twelve verbs account for nearly every occurrence.
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
Most German verbs with one object take the accusative. A small, fixed group takes the dative instead, and their English equivalents give no hint: helfen, danken, folgen, gefallen, gehören, passen, antworten, gratulieren, glauben, begegnen. Ich helfe dir, not "dich".
The group is small and stable, so it can simply be learned. Ten or twelve cover almost everything a learner meets in the first two years, and they are worth memorising with a pronoun attached, because that is where the case is visible: ihm helfen, ihm danken, ihm gefallen.
Two of them turn the English sentence around. Gefallen means "to be pleasing to", so what English calls the subject becomes the dative object: Das Buch gefällt mir is "I like the book", with the book as subject. Gehören works the same way: Das Buch gehört mir.
A closer look
Why it makes sense, historically
The dative marks the person something happens to, or for, rather than the thing being acted on. Helping somebody does not change them the way hitting them does; it is done for their benefit. Thanking, answering, congratulating and following are all directed at a person without altering them.
That intuition will not decide every case reliably — unterstützen means much the same as helfen and takes the accusative — but it makes the list easier to hold, and it explains why many of the same verbs take a dative in Latin, in Russian and in Old English too.
Exceptions and special cases2
Exception
When the verb takes both a dative and an accusative
then it does not belong to this group.
Ich gebe dir das Buch.I am giving you the book.
Why? Geben, zeigen, schicken have two objects and follow the ordinary rule: the person is dative, the thing accusative.
Exception
When a passive is built from a dative verb
then the dative stays dative and the sentence has no subject.
Ihm wurde nicht geantwortet.He was not answered.
Why? Only an accusative object can become a passive subject.
Worth knowing2
Worth knowing
A second family: feelings in the dative
German expresses several physical and emotional states with a dative person, often with no subject at all: Mir ist kalt, Mir ist schlecht — and in Mir tut der Kopf weh the person is dative too, while the head is the subject. The person is not doing anything; the state is happening to them, which is exactly what the dative marks.
Worth knowing
glauben takes both, with a difference
Ich glaube dir means "I believe you, the person"; Ich glaube das means "I believe that, the statement". Person in the dative, statement in the accusative — and both in one sentence: Ich glaube dir das nicht.
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The verbs on this page, in every form: werden · haben · helfen · antworten · sein · geben · hören · passen