Is "einem praktischen Ziele" an error?

[edmont]

This was reported as a lecture title -- but it seems to confuse singular and plural. Am I missing something?

"Wege aus der sozialen Not und zu einem praktischen Ziele"

Thank you for any assistance.

[tiorthan]

You've stumbled across an actual piece of language evolution there.

Historically modern German strong masculine and neutral nouns (those with a Genitive in -(e)s) had actually two different dative forms the regular form we still use today and an old form (inherited from Middle High German) with an -e.

As the -e was a remnant of Middle German grammar it was, usually, seen as highly formal. That form was used up until about 1940 when it slowly dropped out of use.

Some words, however, changed their meaning when the e-dative was used. Those words are, largely, still in use today. For example:

Im Zug = in the train
Im Zuge = in the course of

In some cases the archaic form also survives in idioms like "dem Manne kann geholfen werden".

[edmont]

Ah. Thank you very much tiorthan for the clear explanation.