- The nominative case is used for sentence subjects. The subject is the person or thing that does the action. For example, in the sentence, “the girl kicks the ball”, “the girl” is the subject.
- The accusative case is for direct objects. The direct object is the person or thing that receives the action. So in “the girl kicks the ball”, “the ball” is the direct object.
- The dative case is for indirect objects. The indirect object is the person or thing who “gets” the direct object. So in the sentence “The girl kicks the ball to the boy”, “the boy” is the indirect object.
- The genitive case is used to express possession. In English, we show possession with an apostrophe + s “the girl's ball”.
https://storylearning.com/learn/german/german-tips/german-cases-explained#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20having%20a,is%20used%20for%20sentence%20subjects.&text=The%20accusative%20case%20is%20for%20direct%20objects.