Why is there no dative form for "was" on wiktionary

Question

On wiktionary entry on "was" there's given an accusative form ("was") and a genitive form ("wes/wessen"). Why is there no dative? But the question should perhaps be why there's accusative and genitive as I can't really come up with an example where those would be used. I would guess that examples where dative would be used doesn't make sense.

Answer 1

The dative form of "was" is "was", so that's something that should be pointed out on the discussion page of https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/was

The problem is that this dative is hardly used in isolation, its existence is beyond doubt only after prepositions: "mit wem - mit was". That's always ok. Consider, however: "Man darf es nicht dem direkten Sonnenlicht aussetzen" (you mustn't expose it to direct sunlight) and now as a question: "Was darf man es nicht aussetzen" – I feel this may be hard to get for many German speakers (personally, I am maybe quite tolerant).

The Duden grammar (2022 ed.) marks the following example as ungrammatical: "*Was gleicht dieses Haus" (p. 755) (what does this house resemble?). I sort of agree here, but maybe just because the sentence sounds somewhat blunt as it is. With more context and more material, it starts sounding acceptable to me: "Na gut, wir kennen nichts Ähnliches, aber was gleicht es denn am ehesten?"

Concerning the question of WHY there is a gap in the dative, the text of the Duden grammar suggests it is because the dative form is not "distinctive" enough. This would mean, there are forms that exist in principle but are avoided because they do not show the required case clearly enough, and so much so that the form even starts to feel grammatically absent. Similar things happen with other indefinite pronouns like "nichts" or "etwas".

Answer 2

The word was is a pronoun that comes in three flavors:

• Interrogative pronoun
  used to create questions to ask for inanimate items
• Indefinite pronoun
  used mainly in colloquial speech as a short version of »etwas«
• Relative pronoun
  used to define and introduce relative clauses (clauses, that describe something)

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usage

Interrogative pronoun

German »was?« works like English »what?«
Use »was« and it's forms only to ask for inanimate items ("things", i.e. not persons or person-like entities like gods, ghosts, pets, robots etc.)

Case	Example	Translation
nom.	Was ist im Glas?	What's in the glass?
gen.	Wessen wurde der Angeklagte bezichtigt?	What was the defendant accused of?
dat.	Wem ähneln Orgelpfeifen?.1	What do organ pipes resemble?
acc.	Was siehst du?	What do you see?

¹ German has about 40 verbs that need a dative object (here is a list), but all of them expect this dative object to be a person. Only »sich nähern« (»Er nähert sich dem Haus«) and ähneln (»Orgelpfeifen ähneln Zylindern«) can also be used with inanimate dative objects, but even these two verbs often have animate dative objects (»Er nähert sich dem Kind«; »Annas Tochter ähnelt dem Briefträger«). You can ask for inanimate dative objects with »wem«, but since in most cases the expected answer is a person, it almost always seems as if you would ask for a person. You can ask »Wem nähert sich das Auto?« But when you hear the answer »Das Auto nähert sich der Kreuzung.« then the word wem in the questions seems somehow strange afterwards.

If you need to ask for animate items (persons etc., but not for things), then use »wer?« instead. It works like English »who?«

Case	Example	Translation
nom.	Wer will mich sprechen?	Who wants to talk to me?
gen.	Wessen Auto parkt vor meiner Garage?	Whose car is parked in front of my garage?
dat.	Wem ähnelt Annas Tochter?	Whom does Anna's daughter look like?
acc.	Wen wollen Sie sprechen?	Who do you want to speak to?

Indefinite pronoun

When used as indefinite pronoun, the word behaves exactly like »etwas« and »nichts«: The word can be used in any other case, but will still not be inflected.

Case	Example	Translation
nom.	Jetzt ist schon wieder was passiert.	Now something has happened again.
gen.	Diese Aufgabe bedarf was, dessen ich mich nicht mehr entsinnen kann.	This task requires something that I can no longer remember.
dat.	Kommen wir nun zu was anderem.	Now let's move on to something else.
acc.	Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst.	I see something, that you don't see.

Relative pronoun

Case	Example	Translation
nom.	Das ist alles, was ich weiß.	That's all I know.
gen.	Sie besann sich dessen, wessen sie gerühmt wurde.	She remembered what she was praised for.
dat.	(Not a solution, just a workaround: »Hier ist nichts, dem meine Tasche ähnelt.«)2	There is nothing here that resembles my bag.
acc.	Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst.	I see something, that you don't see.

² You could write: »Hier ist nichts, was meiner Tasche ähnelt«, but then »was« is the subject of the relative clause and therefore in nominative case while »meine Tasche« turned into the dative form »meiner Tasche«. So subject and object did change roles. But we wanted to have a dative form of »was« as the opener of the relative clause, with »meine Tasche« being the subject in nominative case, and that seems not to be possible. You can use »dem« that works great at this position, but »dem« is a grammatical form of »der«, not of »was«.