More case struggles.

[u/Phormicidae]

Deciphering accusative vs dative is still very tricky in practice, even when I think I get it. Partly this is due to the appearance of pronouns in sentences that I don't expect them.

Ich kann mich nicht an das Wort erinnern. I would have written: "Ich kann nicht das Wort erinnern." and I guess that's wrong. What is "mich" doing here?

[u/dido_meditatur]

sich erinnern = remember

jemanden an etwas erinnern = remind someone of something

[u/One-Two-Housing → u/dido_meditatur]

Italian does the same: “mi ricordo” for remember, “ricordare a qualcuno” for remind. Made this click for me.

[u/IchLiebeKleber]

When you learn a verb, you need to also learn how to use it, i.e. how sentence roles work with it.

It's just a property of the verb "erinnern" that if you want it to mean "remember", the way to use it is with a reflexive accusative pronoun plus the preposition "an" followed by an accusative.

[u/Phormicidae → u/IchLiebeKleber]

Thank you for that explanation. I keep making this mistake, because it sometimes works, where a new verb functions very similarly to how it does in English. I have yet to see the pattern on when to expect otherwise. I appreciate your help!

[u/silvalingua → u/Phormicidae]

> where a new verb functions very similarly to how it does in English. 

That's the problem: you think of English grammar and collocations when learning German. It's really best to forget about other languages.

In particular, reflexivity of verbs often doesn't work the same in German and English.

Btw, your question/problem here is not really about declension cases, but about verbs.

[u/taxiecabbie]

"sich erinnern" is reflexive.

Have you learned reflexive verbs yet?

[u/Phormicidae → u/taxiecabbie]

Barely. I've found some sentences where reflexive verbs are used and thought (incorrectly) that I found a pattern. There's more work to be done. Thank you.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/Phormicidae]

Yeah. Look up reflexive verbs. It explains this.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/taxiecabbie]

"sich erinnern" is reflexive

yes, that's what i think too

but even in german i hear more and more people use "erinnern" transitively, not only when the meaning ist "to remind", but also for "to remember":

"ich erinnere den sommer vor zwei jahren noch sehr gut"

is that just one more of these pseudocool anglicisms?

anyway it maes my toenails roll up to my ankles

[u/CrazyIntroduction837 → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

Not an anglicism, it's a Northern Germany thing

[u/muehsam]

Ich kann mich nicht an das Wort erinnern. I would have written: "Ich kann nicht das Wort erinnern." and I guess that's wrong. What is "mich" doing here?

The actual idiomatic way to say this is "ich weiß das Wort nicht mehr", or "das Wort fällt mir nicht mehr ein".

It's true that if you use the word "erinnern", you need a reflexive direct object, because otherwise you're saying "I can't remind the word". Obviously that's wrong. But more generally, many learners overuse "sich erinnern". They think of "remember" in English and then try to translate it literally to German without thinking about the actual idiomatic way to express this in German.

[u/One-Two-Housing → u/muehsam]

Saving this. “Fällt mir nicht ein” is so much more natural, and honestly it describes my vocabulary perfectly most days.

[u/Pwffin]

Cases are triggered by different things (eg prepositions) and verbs are a big one where sadly you just have to learn what each verb requires.

Good news is that a lot of them are predictable and most dictionaries will also tell you how they work. Its also fairly easy to learn it as a little rhyme and you'll soon feel a need to supply all objects in the right cases.

[u/AdApprehensive6090]

"erinnern" is reflexive: sich an etwas erinnern = to remember something (literally "remind yourself of something"). So "mich" is "myself", and "an das Wort" is the thing you remember. Ich erinnere mich an das Wort → Ich kann mich nicht an das Wort erinnern. Same with sich freuen auf, sich interessieren für. Learn them as one chunk with the sich and the preposition.

[u/hacool]

As others have mentioned, the issue here is the reflexive verb. German uses reflexives differently and more frequently than English. https://germanstudiesdepartmenaluser.host.dartmouth.edu/Reflexives/Reflexive.html has a good overview. As you noticed these often involve the accusative pronouns. (And a few use dative.)

Wiktionary is a good resource to see which uses of a verb are reflexive. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/erinnern#Verb

[u/Emotional_Bid3562]

Funny that you picked an example which is actually slightly ambiguous in German, even though people here act as if it wasn't.

1. In less formal German erinnern is sometimes used in non-reflexive constructions like ich erinnere das Wort nicht.

2. In the Berlin dialect the dative and accusative case are about to collapse into only dative case, as in ich erinnere *mir** nicht*.

Still, for your case it's probably better to keep that in mind as a fun fact and learn erinnern as a reflexive verb. On other hand, once you use German outside of learning environments, people will perfectly understand ich kann nicht das Wort erinnern, because nobody will think that you are trying to remind a word of something, which is the literal meaning :-)