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I'm told a way to recognize the appropriate case is the following:

Ich gab Ihm einen Kuss = Dativ; wem gab ich einen Kuss= Ihm

I'm having a hard time understanding how this helps. It actually helps when you know the correct answer! Otherwise how you would know you should ask "wem gab ich einen Kuss" and not "wen gab ich einen Kuss", for instance?

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2 Answers 2

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I'm guessing this advice ist aimed at native speakers trying to learn the concept of cases and their names.

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  • no... you can find many books and web sources designed for non natives learners of German.
    – Emanuel
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 22:02
  • Native speakers or sufficiently immersed speakers, who start to have a feeling for the language. Agree that the advice for learners is quite useless, except if they should remember it for later or can use the question to ask a native speaker.
    – Dirk
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 8:22
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If you don't know that the correct question for the sentence

Ich gab ihm einen Kuss.

is

Wem gab ich einen Kuss?

then it doesn't help you, as you pointed out already.

If you do though, it helps in that it is much easier determining the case on basis of the interrogative particle "wem" than on the basis of all kinds of pronouns, which are much more diverse.

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  • Wem seine Antwort ist das? Dem nem75 seine Antwort. :)
    – user unknown
    Commented Jun 12, 2012 at 1:40
  • Was für eine Antwort ist das? Die richtige, aber nicht akzeptierte. Ach ja ...
    – nem75
    Commented Jun 12, 2012 at 7:09
  • Eine zwar richtige, aber leicht verspätete Antwort.
    – Gigili
    Commented Jun 13, 2012 at 17:04

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