Word
Der Mann trinkt im Café Kaffee.
Meaning
The man drinks coffee in the café.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Der Mann trinkt im Café Kaffee.
in
in
dem
the; (masculine or neuter, dative)
trinken
to drink
der Kaffee
the coffee
Questions & Answers about Der Mann trinkt im Café Kaffee.
Why is it Der Mann and not Den Mann or Dem Mann?
German marks the grammatical role of a noun with cases.
- Der Mann is nominative (subject of the sentence).
- Den Mann is accusative (direct object).
- Dem Mann is dative (indirect object or object of certain prepositions).
In this sentence, the man is the one doing the action (he is drinking), so he is the subject. Subjects in German take the nominative case, so you must use der Mann, not den or dem Mann.
Why is Mann capitalized?
In German, all nouns are capitalized, not just proper names.
- Mann is a noun (a person), so it is written as Mann, not mann.
- The same is true for Café and Kaffee.
This is a spelling rule in German, not emphasis. Whenever you see a capitalized word in the middle of a sentence, it is very likely a noun.
Why is the verb form trinkt and not trinken?