I'm a first year German learner and I am enjoying learning the language so far. One of the things I learned was the dative case.
I have a question about this line that I made up for a how-to.
Du steckst das Ladekabel in dem Adapter. (You plug the charging cable in the adapter.)
Would this be the correct usage of the dative case? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use "dem after the "in".
German has dual prepositions. These are an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, and zwischen. They mean different things when used with accusative or dative.
With accusative, they mean a direction.
Du steckst das Ladekabel in den Adapter.
(You put it into the adaptor.)
With dative, they mean a position.
Das Ladekabel steckt in dem Adapter.
(It's plugged in.)
The preposition in is dual also with times. It means crossing a border in time with accusative and a spot in time with dative.
Wir feiern in den Mai.
(The party is from 4/30 to 5/1)
Wir feiern im Mai.
(The party is in May.)
Apart from those the case the preposition goes with is fixed and may be accusative or dative or genitive.
