Its forms

The dative is nothing more than a set of article endings with a little add-on in the plural and a set of personal pronouns. This is just an overview. Please do not try to learn these forms yet. We'll cover them step by step as we go:

Artikel

dem (m)
dem (n)
der (f)
den + n (plural)

Personalpronomen

mir - (to) me
dir - (to) you
ihm - (to) him
ihm - (to) it
ihr - (to) her

uns - (to) us
euch - (to) you (guys)
ihnen - (to) them
Ihnen - (to) you (sir/madam)

You can easily memorize its article endings with help of the keyword: dimmering or if you prefer German: Dämmerung > dawn. Also note that the m has three strokes down and dative is the third case of four.

When do I use it?

There are four situations in which you would have to use it:

1. After a dative preposition
2. After a two-way preposition
3. After a dative verb
4. For the receiver if there are two objects in one sentence

1 | After a dative preposition

There are only a few dative prepositions. The most common ones are:

ab - from
aus - from/out of
bei - at
mit - with
nach - after/to

seit - since
von - from/of
zu - to
außer - except
gegenüber - opposite of.

After any of these prepositions you will have to use the dative. You will never come across a mit das or mit die e.g.

2 | After a two-way-preposition + Wo? <-- FIXED POSITION / LOCATION

These are the following:

vor - before/in front of
hinter - behind
über - above
unter - under
neben - next to
an - at/on
zwischen - in between
auf - on top
in - in

Wo ist mein Bleistift? Auf dem Tisch. (D)
Where is my pencil? On the table.

Later, there will be an extra segment about the two-way prepositions covering the origin of their weird name and a precise description of their usage.

3 | After a dative verb

There are about 50 dative verbs which you don't have to worry about for now. Later in this course I will show you a wonderful technique that will help you to learn quite a few of these within a few hours.

4 | The receiver of a thing (ONLY IF there are two objects in a sentence)

There are verbs that can take two objects, a direct one and an indirect one. In almost all the cases you will then have one dative (indirect) and one accusative (direct) object. There are only three exceptions for now.* The good news is that these verbs are universal. That means even on Mars they would have such verbs. One example:

Bringst Du mir einen Wein?
Will you bring me (a bottle of) wine?

You could leave out the mir but not the Wein. Yet in all languages you can bring something to somebody. And that somebody in German is put into the dative. One could say that the gift is always in the accusative and the receiver of that gift is always in the dative.

Fußnote

*The three verbs that can have two accusatives are: lehren > to teach, kosten > to cost and nennen >to name. They are very rarely used so that we can calmly ignore them.

How do I find the dative?

You can find the dative by asking the questions wem. There is no difference between persons and non-persons.

Die Kinder helfen den Nachbarn.
The children are helping the neighbors.

Subject: Wer hilft den Nachbarn? Die Kinder.
Dative: Wem helfen die Kinder? Den Nachbarn.

One trick is to remember the following:
wem ends in m just like dem or einem

The dative plural

An extra n is added to the noun in the dative plural. That is if there‘s not already an n as in the above example (“Nachbar n” is the regular plural so no extra n). Here’s one final example of the dative plural:

Ich tippe mit zehn Fingern.
I type with ten fingers.

The normal plural of Finger is Finger. Thanks to the dative plural it gets an additional n.

There is one more exception of this is when the noun's plural already ends in -s. In this case there is no extra n. For example:

mit Babies
mit Ponys