Breakdown of Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
Questions & Answers about Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
Im is just the usual spoken and written contraction of in dem.
- in dem Garten = in + the (dative, masculine) + garden
- im Garten = in dem Garten
Both are grammatically correct. Im is much more common in everyday German; in dem Garten sounds a bit more formal or is used if you want to stress dem (for example, contrasting “in that garden” with another place).
The preposition in can take either dative or accusative, depending on meaning:
- Dative: location (where?) – no movement
- im Garten = in the garden (located there)
- Accusative: direction (where to?) – movement into something
- in den Garten = into the garden (movement towards it)
In Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher, the idea is I feel safe *while I’m in the garden, so it’s a location → *dative: (in) dem Garten → im Garten.
No, that would be wrong in standard German.
In den Garten (accusative) expresses movement into the garden, but fühlen here is not a movement verb. You are not moving into the garden in this sentence; you are describing how you feel while being there.
So you use dative for location:
- ✅ Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
- ✅ Ich gehe in den Garten. (I’m going into the garden. – movement → accusative)
- ❌ In den Garten fühle ich mich sicher. (ungrammatical)
German main clauses follow the Verb-second (V2) rule: the conjugated verb must be in second position, but anything can occupy the first position.
So all of these are correct:
- Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
- Ich fühle mich im Garten sicher.
- Sicher fühle ich mich im Garten.
Starting with Im Garten simply puts emphasis on the place. It slightly answers the question “Where do you feel safe?” more strongly than “What do you feel?” or “Who feels safe?”
Yes, you can, and it’s very common:
- Ich fühle mich im Garten sicher.
Both:
- Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
- Ich fühle mich im Garten sicher.
mean the same thing in most contexts. The difference is only in focus:
- Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher. – emphasizes the location first.
- Ich fühle mich im Garten sicher. – starts with I and sounds a bit more neutral in terms of what’s emphasized.
Grammatically, both word orders are standard and correct.
In German, the verb fühlen in the sense of “to feel (a certain way)” is normally reflexive:
- Ich fühle mich sicher. = I feel safe.
Literally: I feel myself safe. That’s just the required structure in German.
- Ich fühle sicher. is wrong here; without mich, fühlen usually means “to touch/feel something with your hands” or “to sense something”, and you’d expect an object:
- Ich fühle die Wand. (I touch/feel the wall.)
Ich bin sicher is grammatical, but it usually means:
- I am sure / I’m certain (about something), or
- I am safe (stating a condition of being safe, not necessarily an inner feeling).
If you want to express an inner feeling, German prefers sich fühlen:
- Ich fühle mich sicher. (I feel safe.)
Ich fühle mich sicher:
- Focuses on your subjective feeling or state.
- Means I feel safe / secure (emotionally or physically).
Ich bin sicher usually has two main readings:
- I am certain / I’m sure:
- Ich bin sicher, dass er kommt. = I’m sure he’s coming.
- I am safe in a more factual sense of not in danger (often needs more context to be natural).
So in the context of “In the garden I feel safe”, Ich fühle mich sicher is the natural choice, because you are talking about an internal sense of safety.
Reflexive pronouns in German change with the case, and sich fühlen takes the accusative, not the dative.
- 1st person singular:
- Akkusativ: mich
- Dativ: mir
With fühlen (to feel a certain way), you must use accusative:
- Ich fühle mich sicher. (correct)
- ❌ Ich fühle mir sicher. (incorrect)
You’d use mir with verbs that require a dative reflexive, for example:
- Ich wasche mir die Hände.
(I wash my hands. – literally: I wash *for myself the hands.*)
In a simple German main sentence, the word order is broadly:
[First element] – [conjugated verb] – [subject, objects, other stuff] – [rest like adjectives, adverbs]
In this sentence:
- Im Garten – first element (place)
- fühle – conjugated verb (2nd position)
- ich mich – subject + reflexive pronoun
- sicher – adjective describing how you feel (comes later in the “middle field”)
Sicher is a predicative adjective (it completes the idea of “feel”), and it’s very normal in German to put it towards the end, after pronouns and place phrases.
Other natural variants (all correct) show the same pattern:
- Ich fühle mich im Garten sicher.
- Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher.
In both, sicher is at or near the end.
Garten is masculine in German: der Garten.
You see this indirectly from the dative form:
- Masculine dative singular: dem
- in dem Garten → im Garten
So dem (inside im) indicates that Garten is masculine.
Yes, the sentence Im Garten bin ich sicher is grammatically correct, but it sounds slightly different:
- Im Garten fühle ich mich sicher. – In the garden, I *feel safe.
→ stresses your *subjective feeling. - Im Garten bin ich sicher. – In the garden, I *am safe.
→ sounds more like a *statement of fact: objectively, when you’re there, you’re not in danger.
In many everyday situations they might overlap, but fühle ich mich sicher is more clearly about your inner experience.
Yes, there is a small difference in preposition choice, based on how German speakers “conceptualize” the place:
- im Garten (in dem Garten) – “inside” a garden, which is felt like an enclosed or delimited green area.
- im Park (in dem Park) – likewise, in a park.
- auf dem Hof – on the courtyard / yard: courtyards and open squares are often thought of as surfaces, so German uses auf (on).
All of these are location expressions, so they use the dative:
- im Garten, im Park, auf dem Hof (all dative).