Voted Best Answer
Jun 02, 2020 - 05:59 AM
Great question... in fact, they are both correct!
In German, going to a place can use either in or zu as prepositions.
in uses the Akkusativ, as in your suggestion, while zu uses the Dativ.
So the phrase "I go to school" can be rendered as either:
Ich gehe in die Schule.
or
Ich gehe zur Schule. (Here, zur is just the short form of zu der, just as zum is short for zu dem...)
The difference between them is negligible, in my opinion, as it is very nuanced and practically non-existent. They can both mean "I go to school" in the sense that "I am a student," or in the sense that "I am physically going to the school right now." You could argue that in die Schule emphasises that you're going into the school building, whereas zum points at a more general sense of the place "school." But that's a matter of semantic dispute. Practically speaking, they are virtually the same. Native German speakers don't fuss about it at all.
In German, going to a place can use either in or zu as prepositions.
in uses the Akkusativ, as in your suggestion, while zu uses the Dativ.
So the phrase "I go to school" can be rendered as either:
Ich gehe in die Schule.
or
Ich gehe zur Schule. (Here, zur is just the short form of zu der, just as zum is short for zu dem...)
The difference between them is negligible, in my opinion, as it is very nuanced and practically non-existent. They can both mean "I go to school" in the sense that "I am a student," or in the sense that "I am physically going to the school right now." You could argue that in die Schule emphasises that you're going into the school building, whereas zum points at a more general sense of the place "school." But that's a matter of semantic dispute. Practically speaking, they are virtually the same. Native German speakers don't fuss about it at all.
