[ SECRET POST #2237 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2237 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 113 secrets from Secret Submission Post #319.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[dreemyweird]

IDK, it's usually obvious what the first form is? Because I know at least two languages that contain accusative/partitive playing the role of accusative, and in both of them the changing part of a word is the ending. Perhaps there are languages where roots change; that must be weird, yeah.

But English doesn't change nouns at all. Only some pronouns.

UPD. On the second thought, I can think of some words with changing roots, but the changes are minor. Say, in Russian there's the word "veter" (which means "wind"), but the accusative of "veter" is "vetra" ("e" is taken away because of reasons). Still sounds similar, though.

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[khronos_keeper]

I mean, I'm very familiar with words changing forms, but still dependent on their roots; Arabic has 10 forms that change a root word slightly, but leave the word looking bewilderingly like it was before.

But changing the proper noun of something midsentence depending on how it's being referred to is hella confusing. I kind of figured Russian or some Eastern European language might do this.

Actually, it would be really fascinating to learn the rules of how the form changes. I love those tricky types of rules.

Now that I think about it, Arabic does have some irregular verbs that have what you call "hollow vowels" that change from it's root form to any of its 10 other forms.

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[dreemyweird]

But why is it more confusing than the changes that verbs undergo? Is it just a matter of habit?

For me verbs have always been more confusing than nouns. I learn Spanish, and I just can't with this profusion of verb forms...

English is simpler in this sense, of course. For some reason I find syntax rules easier to memorize than the verb forms+noun forms combination [although English does contain changing verbs, there are essentially only three versions one needs to know, and the majority of them are regular anyway].

Oh, you'd like Estonian! It has fourteen noun forms ^_^ Partitive in particular is used:
after all the numerals except "one"
when a noun is an object of a verb

Then there are those newly-made cases, the so-called "nina taga" set.
The -ni ending means "until [noun]"
-na ending means "as [noun]", "playing the role of [noun]"
-ta means "without [noun]"
-ga means "with [noun]"

Also there are endings that signify movement. Thus, there are different forms for "to move in [noun]" and "to move out of [noun]".

...Hungarian has even more of those, but I'm not familiar with it. Upon brief googling I discovered that they don't call them "cases" anymore, because they make a difference between cases and suffixed postpositions; besides, there seems to be a problem with the way Hungarian grammar works (i.e. it doesn't allow usual Western classification)?

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[khronos_keeper]

I think it's just a cognitive hangup. I'd get over it quickly if I were to start learning a language with varying accusative forms. It's like learning to read from right to left when I started with Arabic, or learning to attach possessives at the end of nouns rather than at the beginning.

English is a tricky bitch, and I'm pretty sympathetic to anyone trying to remember our very wide history of verb collection. Latin based verbs are usually regular. Old English based words are often irregular.

I actually have been meaning to learn Russian, so I'm really thankful this thread brought it up. Sort of prepares me for some of the more unusual pitfalls my mind will have to get over.

Funny, that bit with Estonian sounds more like how they handle prepositions rather than cases. Hm.

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[dreemyweird]

I actually think that the worst part of English is conditionals. All the would/would've been/was stuff. Verbs aren't that hard, especially considering the fact that even the irregular ones have some change patterns (learn-learnt, keep-kept, creep-crept etc.)

!
Good luck) Russian has a lot of exceptions and strange structure, that's why it may be hard. For example, nouns change differently according to which group they are in (there are three groups).
Also the syntax is very flexible, and one sentence can have five or ten legitimate variations.
You can say "Why are you here?" or you can say "You are here why?" or "You why are here?", all of them are correct. It's a bit like Yoda's speech.
Good news, though, is that there are only six noun forms and three tenses.
Stresses are completely random... there's simply no rule for those.

As to Estonian, you hit home here: nina taga cases evolved from the "preposition+noun" constructions. In fact, some of them are still used with prepositions, which is rather silly, because when one says "ilma piimata", it essentially means "without without milk".

Re: Ridiculous question for linguists/ language-likers

[(Anonymous)]

Celtic languages mutate quite a lot depending on case. Éire (Ireland), as Éirinn (from Ireland), Poblacht na hÉireann (The Republic of Ireland).

I'd never use anything but the accusative in English though.

That said, it occurs to me that there's a famous legend called "The Children of Lir", but "Lir" is the genetive case. And whatever way it slipped in, when we talk about that legend we use the genetive as the nominative now.