In the sentence "Ich begegnete einem alten Freund in Berlin", why do we use "einem" instead of "einen"? The sentence translates to "I met an old friend in Berlin". Isn't "an old friend" the direct object? Why do we use the dative "einem" instead of the accusative "einen"?
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12Direct and indirect objects are not actually a valid concept in German grammar. It's best if you forget them if you want to progress further: german.stackexchange.com/a/34003/6495– user6495Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 5:43
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2"Begegnen" is perhaps more "to run into" or "to come across" than "to meet" which is perhaps better translated as "treffen".– ThomasCommented Jun 10, 2021 at 14:36
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2 Answers
There is a broad rule of thumb to translate English direct objects to German Akkusativ objects and English indirect objects to German Dativ objects, but it's no more than that, a rule of thumb. There are a lot of exceptions to this rule.
Every verb, in English and in German, has its own set of objects that it can go with. Good dictionaries point out the possible objects and their case.
jemandem begegnen - to come across someone
Begegnen just goes with a Dativ object. The reason is in its history. It basically developed from a verb that had to do with "entgegen" (towards), a preposition that goes with Dativ.
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11Just to illustrate that this depends on the verb and not only its meaning, treffen takes an accusative object. Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 10:12
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Man mag dessen überdrüssig sein, aber es ermangelt nicht Verben, die des Dativs bedürfen ;-). Commented Jun 10, 2021 at 16:14
In German you not only have to learn for every noun which gender it has, you also have to learn for every verb in which case it wants to have its objects.
When you look in any German grammar book, you NEVER will find the terms »direct object« and »indirect object«. These are categories that maybe exist in other languages, but they are NOT part of German grammar. So, please don't use this concept. It's misleading. You might get good results in 90% or maybe even 95% of all sentences, but that is not enough to learn proper German.
Do it, like we native speakers did when we learned our own language. We learned for every noun separately which gender it has and we learned for every verb and every preposition separately which grammatical case it's objects need. We learned by listening to other native speakers (parents and people in the neighborhood).
Have a look at the Wiktionary page for »begegnen«. There is a section »Bedeutung« (meaning) and there you can read, that you only can use it with dative case. - I'm sorry, this information about the cases of objects is given very sporadic and inconsistent in Wiktionary, and for most of the verbs you won't find explicit informations. But you always will find examples, and these examples might help you.
Here is a list of German verbs that need dative case: Verben mit einer Dativ-Ergänzung
answered Jun 9, 2021 at 6:49
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1I prefer the terms "accusative object" and "dative object". The whole classification of intransitive/transitive/ditransitive, while serviceable in English, doesn't really work in German. The result is that people who (think they) know English grammar get very confused when they come across something like Ist dir kalt? I prefer valence theory for German because it's more flexible. Grammis has a good take on this, though I don't agree 100% with their system.– RDBuryCommented Jun 9, 2021 at 8:49
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1In addition to (or instead of) Wiktionary, see dict.leo.org/german-english/begegnen for a good online source that will tell you all the meanings associated with various cases (see dict.leo.org/german-english/glauben for an example with more variety). Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 17:40