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The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. The dative generally marks the indirect object of a verb. Other uses include possession, as in Vulgar Latin and, to a lesser extent, Classical Latin; also, in Classical Greek, which has lost the locative and instrumental cases, the dative assumes these functions.

The dative was common among early Indo-European languages and has survived to the present in the Slavic branch, the Baltic branch and the Germanic branch, among others. It also exists in similar forms in several non–Indo-European languagues, such as the Finno-Ugric family of languages, NavajoNavajo is an Apachean language of the Athapaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dene phylum. It is like the other Apachean languages in that although the majority of the languages in the Na-Dene family are spoken much farther north ( Alaska, Yukon,, and JapaneseThe Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. The Japanese name for the language is Nihongo . History and classification Historical linguists do not all agree about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several comp.

Languages that use or used the dative case include:

Ancient Greek (and occasionally Modern Greek)

CzechLanguages of the Czech Republic Slavic languages The Czech language is one of the West Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, Pomeranian, and Sorbian. It is spoken by most people in the Czech Republic and by Czechs all over the world (about 12 milli

DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken worldwide by around 21 million people. The variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium is also informally called Flemish . The Dutch name for the language is Nederlands or less formal Hollands and Dutch is sometimes called

FaroeseFaroese is a West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by about 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 in Denmark. In total, about 80,000 people speak it. It is one of two insular Scandinavian languages which have their origins in the

GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union.

HungarianThe Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent areas of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia (all territories lost after World War I). The Hungarian name for the language is Magyar''. There are

Icelandic

Latin

Latvian

Lithuanian

Old English

Romanian

Russian

Sanskrit

Serbo-Croatian

Slovak

Slovenian

Yiddish

The dative case in English

As seen in the list above, Old English had a dative case; however, the case system gradually fell into disuse during the Middle English period, when the accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun used in both roles. This merging of accusative and dative functionality in Middle and Modern English has led most modern grammarians to discard the "accusative" and "dative" labels in English in favor of the term "objective".

While the dative case is no longer a part of modern English usage, it survives in a few set expressions. One good example is the word "methinks", with the meaning "it seems to me". It survives in this fixed form from the days of Old English (having undergone, however, phonetical changes with the rest of the language), in which it was constructed as "me" (the dative case of the personal pronoun) + "thinks" ("to seem", a verb closely related to the verb "to think", but distinct from it in Old English; later it merged with "to think" and lost this meaning).

The pronoun whom is also a remnant of the dative case in English, descending from the Old English dative pronoun "hwām" (as opposed to the nominative "who", which descends from Old English "hwā") — though "whom" also absorbed the functions of the Old English accusative pronoun "hwone". Likewise, "him" is a remnant of both the Old English dative "him" and accusative "hine", "her" serves for both Old English dative "hire" and accusative "hie", etc.

In current English usage, the indirect object of an action is sometimes expressed with a prepositional phrase of "to" or "for", though an objective pronoun can also be placed directly after the main verb and used in a dative manner, provided that the verb has a direct object as well; for example, "He gave that to me" can also be phrased as "He gave me that", and "He built a snowman for me" can also be rendered as "He built me a snowman". In both examples, the generic objective pronoun "me" functions as a dative pronoun does in languages which still retain distinct accusative and dative cases.

See also: Declension in English

Grammatical cases

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