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Personal Pronouns - Dative

Here are the personal pronouns in the third case (dative):

Form German Phonetic Script English Object Form
1. person singular mir [mi:ə] (to) me
2. person singular (familiar) dir [di:ə] (to) you
3. person singular ihm [i:m] (to) him
3. person singular ihr [i:ə] (to) her
3. person singular ihm [i:m] (to) it
1. person plural uns [ʊns] (to) us
2. person plural euch [ɔyç] (to) you
3. person plural ihnen ['i:nən] (to) them
polite form Ihnen ['i:nən] (to) you (polite form)

Here is one example:

German Phonetic Script English
Er hilft mir. [e:ɐ hɪlft mi:ə] He helps me.

While "Er" is the personal pronoun in the nominative case because it is is the acting part of the sentence (He is helping), "mir" is the pronoun in the dative case. In German we say:

German Phonetic Script English
jemandem helfen ['je:mandəm 'hɛlfən] to help someone

While you only have one object form in English, we use the dative form in German. The respective question would be: Whom does he help?

In English, you often use a preposition to express the indirect object. Here is one example:

German Phonetic Script English
jemandem schreiben ['je:mandəm 'ʃraibən] to write somebody/to write to somebody