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Lesson 50B2

Genitive Prepositions: trotz, während, wegen, statt

షష్ఠీ విభక్తితో వచ్చే జర్మన్ పూర్వసర్గాలు

A handful of formal prepositions demand the genitive case you learned back in Lesson 27 — completing the case-preposition system you started building in A2. Telugu, however, has no matching slot to complete: it never built a preposition-plus-case system in the first place, so this lesson is a good moment to see honestly where German and Telugu grammar simply part ways.

Grammar Comparison

వ్యాకరణ పోలిక

The genitive's main job outside of possession

German

trotz des Regens (despite the rain — Regen takes genitive -s)

Telugu

వర్షం ఉన్నప్పటికీ (despite there being rain — a concessive verb suffix, not a case-marked noun)

Outside of showing possession, the genitive case's biggest remaining job in modern German is following this small set of prepositions: trotz ('despite'), während ('during'), wegen ('because of'), and statt ('instead of'). Telugu does not mark a dedicated case for any of this — it has no genitive-preposition system to complete the way German does. Instead each meaning is carried by ordinary postpositions or verb suffixes: wegen's meaning is normally carried by వల్ల (valla, 'because of/due to'), während's by సమయంలో (samayamlo, 'during/at the time of'), and trotz's concessive sense by a suffix on the verb itself (-అప్పటికీ, 'even though') rather than by marking the noun 'rain' in any special way. Be honest with yourself that this is a case German grammar solved with morphology on the noun and Telugu solved with ordinary postpositions and connectors — there's no one-to-one case correspondence to lean on here.

Vocabulary

పదజాలం

trotz (+Gen.)trots
Telugu
-అయినప్పటికీayinappatiki
English
despite
während (+Gen.)VAY-rent
Telugu
సమయంలోsamayamlo
English
during
wegen (+Gen.)VAY-gen
Telugu
వల్లvalla
English
because of
statt (+Gen.)shtaht
Telugu
-కి బదులుగా-ki badulugaa
English
instead of