# Nominative Case Explained

### What is the Nominativ case?

In German grammar, the nominative case is the basic form of the noun. The subject in a given sentence is always in the nominative case.

### How do you find a subject?

Let us look at a simple sentence for this.

```plaintext
Deu: Er schläft
Eng: He sleeps
```

In this sentence, the action is sleep. To find the subject in the sentence, you need to ask the question, "<mark>Who</mark> is doing the action?". We get the solution as "Er". So, Er is the subject of this sentence.

If I take another example,

```plaintext
Deu: Das Auto ist schön
Eng: The car is beautiful
```

In the above sentence, it makes no sense to ask the question "Who" here. We should ask, "What is beautiful?" in this context. We get the subject as "Das Auto".

### Structure of a Simple Sentence

The structure of a simple sentence is:  
`<Subject> + <Conjugated form of the Verb>`

The subject will be in the nominative form of the noun.

Another point to note here is that the <mark>verb conjugation is based on the subject</mark> in the sentence.

The subject in a sentence can be the name of a person, a thing, or a personal pronoun.

### Personal pronouns in nominativ case

| Deutsche | English |
| --- | --- |
| Ich | I |
| Du | You |
| Er/Sie/Es | He/She/It |
| Ihr | Your(s) |
| Wir | We |
| Sie/sie | Indicate plural or in a formal context |

### Conclusion

We understood what a nominative case is, and how to find the subject in a sentence. To find a subject, we need to ask "Who is doing the action/What is?"