What are the different cases in german and what do they stand for?

There are 4 different cases in the German language: nominativ, akkusativ, dativ and genitiv. The most basic and the one every student starts learning is the nominativ, which basically corresponds with the subject of the sentence, for example, in "Der Hund ist braun" (the dog is brown), "Der Hund is in nominativ. The second case you normally start learning is the akkusativ. The akkusativ corresponds to the direct object of the sentence and it only changes it form when it is a masculine noun. For example, in "Ich habe den Hund." der has transfor into deN, as the dog is no longer the subject; it is the direct object. Furthermore, we have the dativ case, whose most common function is the indirect object, although this a a much more complex case to learn than the others and it is used in many more cases, such as to speak about periods or time, or just with some prepositions. Finally, we have the genitiv case, which basically indicates belonging. Instead of using an ´s, in German they change the case.