Employment law and the workplace

The verb at the centre of this list takes its object in a case English speakers do not expect. A contract is dismissed in the accusative, den Vertrag kündigen, but a person in the dative: Die Firma hat ihm fristlos gekündigt. That matters as soon as the sentence turns passive. English makes the person the subject, he was dismissed; German cannot, because only an accusative object can become the subject of a passive. The dative stays where it is and the sentence is left without a subject at all: Ihm wurde gekündigt, ihr wurde zum Monatsende gekündigt. Er wurde gekündigt is heard every day in conversation, and careful written German still treats it as a mistake, so in a letter to a works council or a claim to the Arbeitsgericht it stands out. The same construction carries every adverb on this list: ihr wurde betriebsbedingt gekündigt, ihm wurde ordentlich gekündigt.