Verbs that take the dative: helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören, schmecken
CEFR A2 · part 1
edumaterial's parts within the level. The European framework does not subdivide them.
The dative: dem, der, dem and den + -nPutting any phrase into the dative: seeing that the marking travels in the article…The seven prepositions that take the dative: mit, nach, aus, zu, von, bei, seitAutomatically putting whatever follows these seven into the dative, without stopping to…The Perfekt with haben: the past that people actually speakTelling any past event the way Germans do when they speak: haben conjugated in second…The Perfekt with sein: moving and changing stateDeciding in a second whether a verb takes haben or sein, using the two questions that…The participle: ge- -t, ge- -en, and the ones with no ge-Building the participle of any verb: the ge- -t mould for regular ones, ge- -en for…The six modals: können, müssen, wollen, dürfen, sollen, mögenUsing the six modals with their odd conjugation —first and third person are identical…The rule, in three lines
About a dozen German verbs take a dative rather than a direct object: helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören, schmecken, passen, antworten, folgen, glauben and gratulieren. No rule predicts them and none is needed: there are twelve and you learn them with the verb, the way you learn a noun's gender. The oddest is gefallen, because it turns the sentence round: the thing is the subject and you are in the dative.
The usual slip. Putting the object into the accusative because it is a direct object in your language. «I help my brother» looks direct and in German it is Ich helfe meinem Bruder, with the dative. And with gefallen the mistake is double: you make yourself the subject and out comes Ich gefalle das Buch, which means «I please the book».
Why it catches you out. English lost this pattern almost entirely: it used to say «me likes the book» —that is where «methinks» comes from— and now says «I like the book», with the person as subject. So an English speaker has no living model for gefallen at all and has to build it from scratch: the thing that pleases is the subject and you are in the dative.