Linguistics

The argument over what counts as correct German has one favourite battlefield: the case after wegen. Written standard German says wegen des Regens; everyday speech says wegen dem Regen, and the standard reference works label the dative colloquial rather than wrong. That is what linguists mean by der Genitivschwund: not a mistake spreading but a case retreating, construction by construction, from speech towards writing. The rule a learner needs has two halves. In anything written for strangers, use the genitive after wegen, trotz and während. But where the genitive would not be visible — a plural noun with no article or adjective in front of it — the standard itself switches to the dative: wegen Geschäften, not wegen Geschäfte. The dative there is no lapse. It is the grammar choosing the one case that can actually be heard.