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I'm a total beginner and I'd like to cover one of the Dativpräpositionen basics in German.

Which of the following sentences is the most correct and complete form of saying "I am going to Anna's house"?

  1. Ich gehe bei Anna nach Hause.
  2. Ich gehe zu Anna nach Hause.

Or is none of the above sentences correct?

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3 Answers 3

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The preposition to in to go to someone/something is (usually) translated as zu or nach, depending on the target. There were already quite a few question on that, which should fully answer your question.

The last question is actually identical to your very question.

Correct is:

Ich gehe zu jemandem nach Hause.

You also find some examples in Duden.

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  • Thank you @Em1, that and the references answer my question. I indeed treat das Haus as an exceptional target with dative, e.g. as opposed to Ich gehe zu der Post, I was confused about going to a specific person's house.
    – Yuval Herziger
    Jan 19, 2015 at 14:49
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If you wanna say I am going to Anna's house, you say :

Ich gehe zu Annas Haus.

Or simply :

Ich gehe zu Anna.

I am going to correct your sentence in number 1. It should be :

Ich bin bei Anna (zu Hause).

It means that you are at her house.

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    @DerPolzglott33, Ich bin bei Anna (zu Hause) doesn't correct the sentence, it's changing its meaning (static vs. dynamic situation)
    – Yuval Herziger
    Jan 19, 2015 at 14:55
  • "Ich gehe zu Annas Haus" is a correct sentence, but it really just means that you are going to the house which is Anna's, it neither implies that she will be there or even that she lives there. I think this is different from the use of "Anna's house" in English (where it may afaik even be used if it isn't even a house).
    – Carsten S
    Jan 19, 2015 at 20:27
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Number two is correct.

Ich gehe zu Anna nach Hause.

Trust me, I am a native German.

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    Your answer is correct, but beeing a native speaker is no reason to trust you. Other users will vote up your answer when it is good, and they will vote it down if it is bad or wrong. So after a while everybody can read the quality of your answer from it's score. There is no need to tell something that most people can't prove and so could be a lie
    – Hubert Schölnast
    Jan 20, 2015 at 10:06
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    @HubertSchölnast: As a learner, I'm very interested in knowing whether an answer is written by a native speaker. I know that it doesn't guarantee correctness (e.g. there can be regional differences), but it's nevertheless one of the most useful pieces of information. The only possible motivations to lie here are (1) ego stroking (via Imaginary Internet Points) and (2) trolling. But there are easier ways of doing both, so the probability is very low.
    – j_random_hacker
    Mar 2, 2015 at 16:35
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    @j_random_hacker thank you for your support :) But I have to admit that I did a mistake. Like the first comment says, I wrote "nach hause" instead of "nach Hause", thats because I have troubles with the upper and lower caseing(?) eventhrough I`m German. But this is also the reason I love the english language, you can write nearly evrything in lower case, and thats what I do in german too sometimes..
    – Marv
    Mar 11, 2015 at 8:34

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