Prepositions

German has a great deal of prepositions that already look like English words.

Ich habe das Brot für dich gekauft.
I bought the bread for you.

The meaning of these cognate prepositions also usually overlaps in a general way with the meaning in English. Nevertheless, each preposition must be learned individually without much cheating from English.

Each preposition takes a grammatical case: either the accusative, dative, or genitive. Some prepositions are called “two-way” prepositions because they sometimes take accusative and sometimes dative. However, the pattern is regular and quickly learned. There are no nominative prepositions.

First, let’s look at the accusative prepositions:

durch	through	durch den Wald (through the forest)
für	for	für dich (for you)
gegen	against	gegen den Feind (against the enemy)
ohne	without	ohne meinen Sessel (without my armchair)
um	around/about	um den Berg (around the mountain)
bis	until/up to	bis seinen Tod (until his death)

bis는 다른 전치사 뒤에 오는 경우가 매우 많습니다. 두 번째 전치사는 명사의 격을 좌우합니다.

bis zum nächsten Woche
until next week

다음으로는 형용사격 전치사입니다.

aus	out, from	aus der Stadt (from the city)
außer	except	außer dem Mann (except for the man)
bei	at, near	bei den Eltern (at the parents’ place)
mit	with	mit einem Freund (with a friend)
nach	after, to	nach dem Ende (after the end)
seit	since, for	seit langer Zeit (for a long time)
von	from	von mir (from me)
zu	자동	zu euch (to you)
gegenüber	across from	dem Tisch gegenüber (across from the table)

gegenüber는 명사구 뒤에 배치할 수 있는 유일한 단어입니다. 또한 앞에 나타날 수도 있습니다.

마지막으로 쌍방향 전치사가 있습니다. 그들이 무언가에 대한 움직임을 묘사할 때, 그들은 직접 목적격의 형태를 취합니다. 그들이 고정된 위치를 설명할 때, 여격의 모양을 취합니다.

an	at, on
auf	upon, on
hinter	behind
in	in, into
neben	next to
über	above, over
unter	under
vor	before, in front
zwischen	between

Here are some examples of contrasting cases:

Er steht vor der Tür. (dative)
He is standing in front of the door. (no motion)

Er stellt die Kisten vor die Tür. (accusative)
He places the boxes in front of the door. (the boxes are moved from another location)

Wir rannten in das Museum. (accusative)
We ran into the museum. (we were outside before)

Wir rannten in dem Museum. (dative)
We ran [around] inside the museum. (we did not change location relative to the museum)

Sie spaziert zwischen den Bäumen. (여격)
She walks through the trees. (많은 나무들이 있고 그 나무들 사이에서 그녀의 모든 걸음이 이루어집니다.)

Sie läuft zwischen die Bäume. (직접 목적격)
She runs between the trees. (그녀는 사전에 다른 장소에 있었습니다)