Re: Dative Case.

Torsten writes:

> I recall from German lessons in school that you had develop a sort
> of "feel" the dative (Danish doesn't have it). It's okay to replace
> your native "for + N" and "to + N" constructions with datives but it
> doesn't really do it for your mind, so to speak. Those that abhorred
> the German language never seemed to get it.

Umm. Danish. Where Hamlet, Christian and Joachim are Princes **TO**
Denmark, while Hamlet, Christian and Joachim's equally royal but less
well-descended cousins are Princes and Princesses **OF** Denmark.
English does have this sense of 'to' (a funny kind of
sort-of genitive), but it's rare. Sort of dative, I think. 'A Prince
for Denmark' also seems possible (Henrik perhaps). Or have I reversed
something and got it wrong?

> To be a little bit more concrete, those countries that have a dative
> can do great things with it on monuments. Three examples:
>
> 1 Over the stairs of the German Reichstag is the text
> "Dem Deutschen Volke". You couldn't have written
> "An das Deusche Volk". It would have sounded like the label on a

> Christmas gift. That allative (?) construction would in Hegelian
> fashion have posited an ablative question in people's minds "Von
> wem?" "From who(m)?", and the answer "From uncle Wilhelm",
> uncomfortably close to the truth, might be ineradicable, once
> having entered.
>
> 2 In Riga I saw the freedom monument with the inscription "Tevzemai
> un Brivibai" and was happy to discover I understood Latvian:
> Obviously Fatherland and Freedom with characteristic IE dative
> suffix.
>
> 3 Roumania "Eroilor Revolutiei ...", Germany "Unseren Gefallenen".
>
> Every time people die for a country, there seems to be a dative
> implicated. Datives make me nervous.
>
> Torsten

Umm. These examples sound like what I've figured out to be the
'benefactive': (As a gift) to/for the martyrs. Yes, I'd be rather
suspicious too.

There is that statue of Peter the Great, before the Winter Palace as I
think, the one on that great big granite boulder. It's inscribed, as I
recall, both in Latin and Russian

To Peter
By Catherine

I always have wondered what cases those two lines are in.