How to memorise those pesky prepositions - Angelika's German Tuition & Transl... When it comes to German grammar learning, I always get asked one big question: “How can I learn those prepositions?” The answer is always the same:”You just have to learn them.” The problem with prepositions is that they are not easy translatable. For example, in English we say ‘I’m on the bus’ which literally translated says ‘I’m on top of the bus’ in German. The Germans say ‘ich bin im Bus’ which means ‘I’m in the bus’ – not quite as bad as being on top of the bus! The second, and bigger, problem is that some prepositions are followed by the accusative case (so you need to know your den, die, das), others by the dative (dem, der,dem) and others by either the accusative or dative – it’s enough to drive anybody mad!!!
(There is another group, those prepositions which take the genitive case, but we won’t mention them here because a lot of Germans don’t understand them either. So, is there at least a way to memorise which prepositions take which case? Some people swear by mnemonics. ) Enjoy!
Preps with Dat visual. Preps with accusative visual.