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I decided to try to read my first German novel, but was stumped already before turning to page 1. The book is Jörg Mauer’s Im Schnee wird nur dem Tod nicht kalt. I haven’t learnt German subjunctive yet, but as I understand it, it translates as ‘in the snow, only [the] death may not get cold’. As I understand it, death is the subject of the sentence, so why is it in the dative?

I looked up the verb zu werden in my dictionary, and for the meaning ‘to become’ (i.e. not the modal usage), it lists the following examples (with added English translations of the Norwegian in square brackets):

was will er ~? hva skal han bli? [what shall he become?] das wird heute nichts mehr ~ det blir det ikke noe av i dag [nothing more will come of that today]; mir wird schlecht jeg blir dårlig [I am getting ill]; es wird Winter det blir vinter [Winter is coming (‘it’s becoming winter’)]; wird’s bald! skynd deg! [hurry up! (‘hurry yourself’)]

There is an example there of a dative (mir wird schlect), but again I am stumped as to why it is. The only thing I can think of, using my knowledge of Latin, is a datīvus commodī/incommodī.

There are some questions that might be relevant, such as ‘Mir ist kalt’ and ‘Question about the dative case’. However, the answers to these questions do not clarify the grammatical origin of this; they merely state the fact that the phrases require the dative. I want to understand the reason. What is the grammatical reasoning behind using a dative here? I suspect that it is, as mentioned above, a datīvus commodī/incommodī, but I do not know this and would like to see an answer that explains the origin of this usage.

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    Further similar question.
    – guidot ♦
    Commented Sep 6 at 13:39
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    The "mir ist schlecht" question explains the case. As to "werden", from your dictionary examples it seems to me that Norwegian and German agree that it would make sense if it was "I become cold" instead of "I am getting cold" in English. Of course, English doesn't care, just as German doesn't care that "death" is the subject off the English sentence, the German sentence doesn't have one.
    – Carsten S
    Commented Sep 6 at 22:23
  • @DavidVogt The closest answer there, to me, seems to be german.stackexchange.com/a/4703/24425. However, I do believe my question is asking for a different thing: I am asking why it is that way; I believe that makes it sufficiently distinct. I also see that tofro has provided an answer which seems to confirm my suspicion.
    – Canned Man
    Commented Sep 7 at 0:21
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    Maybe the following half-baked English translation can be useful for new learners of the German language, just to give them a first, incomplete feeling of how the dative can be used: "mir ist kalt" = "for me, it is cold". Therefore, with the same spirit, "Im Schnee wird nur dem Tod nicht kalt" = "in the snow, only for death it does not become cold".
    – Sylvain Gadenne
    Commented Sep 12 at 9:04

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Yes, what you found here is indeed a dative (in)commodi.

Dem Tod wird kalt actually works down to "death is feeling cold" (instead of "death is cold").

German has taken over a lot of the original Latin dative notions and still retains them.

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  • Thank you for your answer. Is it that German took over this usage, or that Proto-Germanic and Proto-Italic had the same (independently developed?) usage of the dative case? Do you have any sources to back up what you tell?
    – Canned Man
    Commented Sep 7 at 0:24
  • The easiest source is probably the entry in German Wikipedia for Dative. It also lists a number of other usages directly derived from Latin. I don't have any sources (and would find it very unlikely) that the various Dative usages went through "normal" proto-Language development: It's very much more likely that they were taken over when Latin was the agreed lingua scientia of the Middle Ages
    – tofro
    Commented Sep 7 at 0:32
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    A little side note: Translating "Dem Tod wird kalt" as "death is feeling cold" isn't completely correct. Phrases like this can be built with "sein" (to be) and describe a state, or they can be built with "werden" (to become) and describe a change. So "Dem Tod wird kalt" means more something like "death is getting cold". As a state, "death is feeling cold" would be "dem Tod ist kalt".
    – Henning Kockerbeck
    Commented Sep 7 at 7:18
  • @HenningKockerbeck I have deliberately chosen exactly this translation to express the lack of objectiveness in the German expression which doesn't come across as clear (I think) in "is getting cold". Dem Tod wird kalt is completely subjective (from death's viewpoint) - it could even be 40 degrees outside (and my wife tends to be the best example for this lack.....).
    – tofro
    Commented Sep 7 at 9:40
  • @tofro From my experience, "mir ist kalt" and "mir wird kalt" are both completely subjective. The difference is only expressing a state in the former and expressing a change of state in the latter.
    – Henning Kockerbeck
    Commented Sep 9 at 21:53

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