kasus - case
Case is a fancy way of referring to a noun or pronoun's role in a sentence. In German, there are four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Nominative is used only for the subject of a sentence. Accusative is used primarily for direct objects and prepositions that require a noun in accusative. Dative is used for indirect objects, objects of dative prepositions, and a very limited set of verbs that take a dative object. The genitive indicates possession, and there are a few genitive prepositions and one or two genitive verbs.