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I'm reading https://de.wikihow.com/Sich-um-die-amerikanische-Staatsangeh%C3%B6rigkeit-bewerben and wonder why it says "Dabei versprichst du: Treuegelübde anderer Ländern abzuschwören"

I see https://en.pons.com/translate/german-english/abschw%C3%B6ren that abschwören requires the dative, so I guess it should have been "anderen Ländern". Would you agree?

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  • For the record: I have now fixed the error in the WikiHow page (or at least triggered the change, I guess someone still has to accept it because I'm a new contributor there).
    – DonHolgo
    Jun 22, 2021 at 9:17

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There are two cases involved here, dative and genitive. You're correct that "abschwören" requires the dative, so it needs to be

(Man muss) Treuegelübden abschwören.

But the part about the other countries needs to be in genitive (Whose pledges of allegiance do you need to recant? The pledges of allegiance of other countries). So it needs to be

(Man muss) Treuegelübden anderer Länder abschwören.

It looks like there's a superfluous "n" in the example.

Another example would be

Sie führt die Hunde anderer Leute Gassi.

in which "die Hunde" is accusative, but "anderer Leute" needs to be genitive.

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