I wanted to know whether there are some general rules or hunches in the German mind that hints at whether an object has accusative or dative case.

For example there are some rules to determine the gender of a word, such as if it ends with -ung , it is feminine. With this rule and others, it is possible to guess the gender of a random word with a high degree of success.

I know that the case has to do with the transitivity of the verb and the objects' being direct (Akk.) or indirect (Dat.). But sometimes what feels like a direct object is used with accusative, e.g. gratulieren . Because in English you congratulate someone, not congratulate to someone.

Another is fragen (Akk.) which can was previously explained here.

These are exceptions and have to be dealt with individually. My question is: are there any rules that can help determine the case? For example allow us to reconstruct this list with %80 accuracy without prior knowledge?