9.3 – Giving Something TO Someone – Dative Case

 

Komu dáváš dárek?

Who are you giving a gift to?

Dávám dárek Petrovi.

I’m giving a gift to Petr.

Komu is the dative of kdo.

In this lesson we will learn the dative case forms that you will need to give. You may recall that the dative case is used for indirect objects. In English the indirect object is often expressed with the word to (for):

‘to’ indirect objects	plain indirect objects (i.e. no to)
I gave a present to Honza. She gave a present to Michael. Lucie read a story to her daughter.	I gave Honza a present. She gave  Michael a present . Lucie read her daughter a story.

As you can see from the second column, we can often leave the word to out in English. Therefore, you cannot rely on the word to to indicate that you need the dative case.

Indirect objects are typically the recipients of actions (though we will learn other uses of the dative as well). They indirectly receive the action of the verb, as opposed to directly receiving the action (cf. above – a present was given, a letter was written, a story was read; the present, letter, and story are the direct objects).

Examples –

Dala jsem Evě novou knihu.

‘I gave a new book to Eva.’ / ‘I gave Eva a new book.’

Dal jsem Zdeňkovi a Lucii knížky.

‘I gave Zdeněk and Lucie (some) books.’

Často dáváme Martinovi peníze.

‘We often give Martin money.’

Dative of Nouns

The dative forms of nouns look very much like the locative forms we just learned (though there will be some slight differences). Here is a table with the forms:

	MA	F
Hard Stem	-ovi Jan → Janovi Petr → Petrovi Honza → Honzovi *masculine names ending in -a take -ovi despite these names following a feminine pattern for other case forms such as acc., gen.,  instr., voc.	-e / -ě Aneta → Anetě Karolína → Karolíně sound changes: k → c, r → ř (also h → z, ch → š, but those are less common in names so won’t be important here). Some examples: Veronika → Veronice Sára → Sáře
Soft Stem	-ovi Lukáš → Lukášovi Tomáš → Tomášovi	-i Lucie → Lucii Marie → Marii

As you may notice, these endings are similar to the locative case. Take a look at 9.3 – dative/locative comparison to compare the two cases.

Dative of Pronouns

The table below gives the dative forms of personal pronouns next to the nominative forms that we already know:

nominative form	dative form
já	mi, mně
ty	ti
on	mu
ona	jí
my	nám
vy	vám
oni (ony, ona)	jim

Remember that these pronoun forms are going to be in 2nd position.

Summary of softenings.

Images used in this document come from these sources.