The accusative case marks the direct object, the person or thing that receives the action of the verb.
Can recognize Accusative case in a short Latin prompt
Schau dir diese Beispiele an. Kannst du das grammatische Muster erkennen?
The slave carries an amphora.
We walk to the Roman Forum.
Achte auf die hervorgehobenen Teile. Was haben sie gemeinsam?
The accusative case marks the direct object, the person or thing that receives the action of the verb. If the nominative tells you who acts, the accusative tells you who or what is acted upon.
English shows the object almost entirely by word order: in "the girl sees the rose," "rose" is the object because it follows the verb. Latin instead puts a special ending on the object, so the words can be rearranged without changing the meaning.
| Declension | Nominative | Accusative sing. | Accusative pl. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | puella | puellam | puellās |
| 2nd | servus | servum | servōs |
| 3rd | rēx | rēgem | rēgēs |
The singular endings -am, -um, -em are your main signal for "this is the object."
The big transfer error is ignoring the ending and reading strictly by order, so Rosam puella videt gets mistranslated as "the rose sees the girl." Watch for -am/-um/-em: that noun is the object no matter where it stands.
Wende diese Grammatik in den Übungen des Kurses A1 an
ÜbungsaufgabenThe slave carries an amphora.
Amphoram is the object, and the -am says so. Move it to the front and it is still the object, which is the whole difference from English.
We walk to the Roman Forum.
Motion towards takes ad plus the accusative. The case, not the preposition alone, is what marks 'to' rather than 'at'.
Im Kurs üben
Wende diese Grammatik in den Übungen des Kurses A1 an