Is this really correct?
"Ich sehn' mich nach der Isar Strand."
Should it not be dem?
Is this really correct?
"Ich sehn' mich nach der Isar Strand."
Should it not be dem?
Ich sehn' mich nach der Isar Strand.
Here, der Isar is a so-called preposed genitive that prececdes the dative noun Strand.
First of all, the phrase sich nach etwas sehnen demands the dative. Examples with all grammatical cases are:
- Ich sehne mich nach der Insel. (feminine singular)
- Ich sehne mich nach dem Haus. (neuter singular)
- Ich sehne mich nach dem Strand. (masculine singular)
- Ich sehne mich nach den Inseln/Häusern/Stränden. (plural)
Now, consider that you want to refer to a particular beach: the Isar beach. In German one can use the compound nound Isarstrand, the gender of which is determined by the last composite, Strand. Since Strand is masculine singular, so is Isarstrand:
Ich sehne mich nach dem Isarstrand.
The content of the previous sentence can be expressed in yet another way using a genitive:
Ich sehne mich nach dem Strand der Isar.
In this construction, the genitive der Isar is postposed, i. e., it succeeds der Strand. In general, genitives may also occur preposed, especially when they involve a proper noun or when the construction is a fixed phrase. In this case, the article is omitted, which in the following examples I indicated by striking them through:
- Evas
derFreund- meines Vaters
dasHaus- meiner Mutter
dasHaus- meines Herzens
dieQual- Des Kaisers
die neuenneue Kleider- Der Widerspenstigen
dieZähmungand also
- der Isar
derStrand
No matter if you consider Isar to be a proper noun or not, the use of preposed genitives without porper names or in non-fixed phrases can still be found today, even though it is generally considered archaic:
Des Weltmeisters Gedächtnis lässt bereits nach (Überschrift in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung vom 23. Juli 2018, S. 35).
(Source: Wikipedia)
Now, let's turn to the original sentence
Ich sehn' mich nach der Isar Strand.
From what we have learned so far, der Isar Strand is a valid preposed-genitive construction, in which the preposed genitive der Isar precedes the dative noun Strand.
Some comments:
"Strand" is of masculine sex in German, thus it would be grammatically correct to say "Ich sehne mich nach DEM Strand", noch "nach DER" which would imply to a female object.
In German the noun itself (in this case "Strand") and its preceding specification ("Isar") are mostly combined to one word, so it would be "Isarstrand" and NOT "Isar Strand".
The correct sentence is: "Ich sehne mich nach dem Isarstrand". Saying "sehn'" instead of "sehne" is colloquial, if it is ok or not depends on the situation, just like saying "I wanna" instead of "I want to" in English.
Hope this helps!