Grammatical Cases: Why are they considered so hard?

[drp9341]

I always hear people talking about grammatical cases as if they are the devil. However in my experience so far, the only difficult thing about grammatical cases is that it multiplies the number of words that a learner must learn.

Disclaimer:My only in depth experience with a language that has a case system is Polish, so if am mistaken, and the reason for the "simplicity" of Polish has nothing to do with it's case system, please correct me. I don't want to continue believing something that is untrue.

In English the word for "Dog" is: "dog" (singular) and "dogs" (plural)
In Polish the word for Dog is: "pies" "psa" "psu" "psem" "psie" (singular) and "psy" "psów" "psom" "psami" "psach" (plural)

After teaching English and Spanish, I've realized correctly using and actually intuitively understanding when to use the definite and indefinite articles, (for someone who's native language does not have articles) is much more difficult than getting the cases right.

In Polish at least, there are rules, and then there are exceptions to those rules. These need to be learned, but with exposure to the language and practice, it's not unbearably difficult; simply time consuming.

Right now my Polish is only at a B1 level, but I feel like the cases make Polish easier to understand, both aurally and when written. If someone says "nie ma czasu" for example, and I don't hear the "nie" I still know it means there's no time. I can go on and on with examples similar to this, even if you don't hear a word, you 9/10 know the meaning because of the cases.

The other day I was correcting a translation from Polish to English, written by a Polish student of mine, (which actually prompted me to start thinking about this, and is the reason I even came up with this post in the first place) and I realized how simply ideas are able to be expressed in Polish, because of the cases. You simply don't need as many words. Also, sentences are divided up into neat little sections because of the cases, making everything easier to read. In English it requires sooooo many words, (perhaps unnecessary words,) to express something that, in Polish, can be expressed much more concisely. English syntax is also extremely complex when compared to Slavic languages. It makes me wonder how the heck Slavs and other people whose native languages have relatively loose syntax, are ever able to truly master English.

I know that people can make the arguments like "you can speak without the articles in English and you'll be understood just fine." or, "you don't need to use the subjunctive in Spanish for people to understand you." These are fair arguments, however I think that the case systems in the Slavic languages are a net neutral; for all the trouble they give you, they also make things easier.

What do you guys think? What do people here who have mastered languages like Hungarian, Finnish or Estonian think? Am I just optimistic and "seeing the glass as half full," or have other people come to these conclusions also?

[Josquin]

I think the most difficult thing about cases isn't learning the endings but using them accurately. For native speakers of a language without cases, the distinction between dative and accusative in German can be very hard to grasp and they often make mistakes. So, the difficulty is in understanding how cases work and what they do instead of just memorizing declension patterns.

Of course, cases can provide you with more flexibility in word order and other things that may seem more elegant than the way English and other languages do it. In Russian, instead of saying "I don't have time" you just say "У меня нет времени" or even "... времени нет" (literally: "At me not of-time"). You don't even need a verb, because the negated genitive does all the work for you.

The point is, languages with cases may work very differently from languages without them and that's what makes understanding their function so difficult. I can't further elaborate on this topic as I'm a native speaker of a language with cases, but even for me learning English or French was much easier than learning a heavily inflected language like e.g. Latin. While languages with cases may be more "elegant", languages without them are more "straightforward", IMHO.

As far as the Finno-Ugric languages are concerned, I understand that the so-called "cases" are rather suffixes or even enclitic postpositions. They are not half as complicated as the case systems of heavily inflected Indo-European languages like Russian, Polish, or Greek. But maybe, someone who has actually learned a Finno-Ugric language can enlighten us further.

One more thing: It's "whose", not "who's"...

[zenmonkey]

German is my fourth solid language - my first were Spanish / English / French.

So learning this:
German

Masc. Fem. Neut. Plural
Nom. der die das die
Acc. den die das die
Dat. dem der dem den
Gen. des der des der

versus English

Masc. Fem. Neut. Plural
Nom. The The The The
Acc. The The The The
Dat. The The The The
Gen. The The The The

was a pain in the butt. "Is the 'der' masculine? Yes, but no...." It's a task, doable but memorisation intensive.

But the thing that made me cry like a little boy that just dropped the most delicious vanilla mango ice cream on the pavement were the dual prepositions "an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor and zwischen" and having to learn them and then think about the subject moving or not moving and all that jazz.

And 'trotz' can kiss my genitive butt.

[reineke]

I am glad you are enjoying Polish but applying a 14x multiplier to the vocabulary load does not sound like a glass half full scenario. It's also inappropriate. One of the many possible difficulties (depending on the language) is that you may wish to say "a dog" but end up saying "belt" (and vice versa) or something incomprehensible.

[Serpent]

My concept of articles used to be focused on English, and when learning German I found it mindblowing that you can basically add endings to articles
In Finnish, I love how you can use the cases with pronouns (so that "where" is just "what" in the appropriate case). Generally I think more cases allow for more precision - to me the Finnish cases are definitely more logical than German

[reineke]

In some languages the declension patterns vary depending on gender.

"Grammatical gender provides a good test case for studying differences between L1 and L2 learning..."

"Native and non-native speakers show different patterns of learning grammatical gender. Children master grammatical gender relatively early (see Slobin, 1985 for cross-linguistic reports), and make few mistakes in spontaneous speech. In contrast, L2 learners have
persistent difficulty with grammatical gender even after extensive exposure (Scherag et al., 2004). Native and non-native speakers also differ in their ability to use the gender information conveyed by the article in real time processing. Native speakers (adults and children) can use this information to guide lexical access; they anticipate a feminine noun following a feminine article (Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007) and slow down if there is a gender mismatch between the article and the noun (Grosjean et al., 1994; Dahan et al., 2000)."

" Non-native speakers do not show these effects (Guillelemon & Grosjean, 2001; Scherag et al., 2004). These findings suggest that native speakers treat the article and the noun as a more cohesive unit than do non-native speakers; this allows them to select the correct article in production, and use it to facilitate recognition in comprehension..."

"Several suggestions have been advanced to explain these different patterns of grammatical gender learning, including: that grammar cannot be fully mastered in adulthood (Clahsen & Muyksen, 1986), or at least not aspects of it that are not found in the learner’s native
tongue (Hawkins & Chan, 1997); and that L2 learners form more shallow grammatical representations that are hard to access in real time (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). These accounts describe the difficulty L2 learners have with grammatical gender, but they do not fully explain why this difficulty arises..."

"While none of children’s early language input is written, adults are likely to learn from written input in which the distinction between the article and the noun is explicit and visually salient. Finally, there is evidence that while adults can use cognitive control to selectively attend to particular aspects of the input, children may largely lack this facility (Ramscar & Gitcho, 2007). In other words, adults not only know that articles and nouns are separate, but they can also ‘choose’ to focus their attention on one or the other."

[aaleks]

After teaching English and Spanish, I've realized correctly using and actually intuitively understanding when to use the definite and indefinite articles, (for someone who's native language does not have articles) is much more difficult than getting the cases right.

Sometimes I think that there's just no good explanation how that thing works. Or good enough for someone with Slavic set of mind. Actually the best explanation about articles I've got here, on the forum. But still I make mistakes here and there.

"<...> These findings suggest that native speakers treat the article and the noun as a more cohesive unit than do non-native speakers; this allows them to select the correct article in production, and use it to facilitate recognition in comprehension..."
.....
"While none of children’s early language input is written, adults are likely to learn from written input in which the distinction between the article and the noun is explicit and visually salient. Finally, there is evidence that while adults can use cognitive control to selectively attend to particular aspects of the input, children may largely lack this facility (Ramscar & Gitcho, 2007). In other words, adults not only know that articles and nouns are separate, but they can also ‘choose’ to focus their attention on one or the other."

I guess it's exactly the case in my case . For me articles and nouns are two separate things.

[Cavesa]

There are various reasons for it. I am a native Czech speaker and I have some experience with German and Latin. And I can tell you the cases are not that easy for me.

my advantages over a native of a language without them: no lost time on "why does this stupid language has this?!", relatively easy understanding of their functions, the syntax of the language is less horrible (even in Latin) and hard than that of English. I may have it easier than the English natives in seeing and applying the patterns, instead of approaching it like a 100% memorisation issue.

my disadvantages: They are not used in the exactly same way. Latin cases are close but there are still differences. The same in German, which has only 4 cases. And these differences from the cases I've been using my whole life can sometimes feel a bit like correcting deeply ingrained mistakes.

no difference: I still need to learn them, to remember them, and to get through my huge pile of mistakes, just like everyone else.

to your question: yes, natives of languages with cases and more "reasonable" syntax struggle with English a lot. Yet, the ESL PR is so strong even those people who are unable to learn it for decades believe "English is the easiest and most useful language, I could never learn something as hard as French!". The thing "you can still speak X without using this or that and be understood" is something I really dislike. Yes, it is a good thing for an absolute beginner to gain confidence, but it is an overall crappy attitude. I always want to speak the language like a person, not like a neanderthal-robot hybrid.

I've heard a professor (medicine) commenting on this. And I totally agreed. Latin is still the queen of languages, as far as the precision/conciseness ratio goes. It is so elegant, it goes to directly to the core, no beating around the bush. German has many of its qualities too but it is not the same. Czech has cases, but suffers from a different problem: the reinvented vocabulary, the excess of creativity of some of the terminology makers, and so on. French and Spanish are somewhere in the middle of the conciseness scale, and they can thank a lot of the Latin derived vocabulary, which does a lot even without the cases. English is unfortunately becoming the standard, but it simply lacks the elegance. Too many words required by the syntax, too little flexibility in word invention, too important mutilation of the Latin words.

English is great for songs. In Czech, and I'd say more languages with cases will have a similar trouble, it is quite hard to put good lyrics together. There are some awesome songs, yes. But in general, you need to avoid every rhyme being based on declination, you need to find rhymes and structures the words you want would still fit in. One of the huge advantages of English is exactly this. A sentence is more like a group of short words. Easier to put together and the results usually sounds good.

[aaleks]

my disadvantages: They are not used in the exactly same way. Latin cases are close but there are still differences. The same in German, which has only 4 cases. And these differences from the cases I've been using my whole life can sometimes feel a bit like correcting deeply ingrained mistakes.

My first L2 was German, I was studying it in school, and I remember that back then I couldn't understand why they have only 4 case when we, in Russian, have 6. Where did 2 more cases get lost? It really was confusing.

[reineke]

"The Italian language is the language of song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry.” But, Druon insists, “French is best at precision, it has a rigor to it. It is the safest language for legal purposes.

...The language of Montesquieu is unbeatable.

Former European Parliament president Nicole Fontaine said: "This language is recognised as being analytical, precise and clear, with a syntax that can adapt to all the intentions of thought, and is particularly apt for describing the definitions and expressions of law."

See" French the most legal language, say the French. "

"On dit souvent," said a woman next to me at lunch, "that the French language is the best for diplomacy because it is the most precise language." She smiled at me. Of course as a civilized person I would share this universal faith.

"That is a complete myth which the French believe dur comme fer," I answered.

She looked shocked. Shocked. The French do universally believe that French is more precise than English (or any other language). "

http://www.ruerude.com/2012/04/the-lack ... guage.html

"Luis Martínez-Fernández, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, claims that "a person whose native language is not English can adopt the English language as a means of communication for a variety of reasons," and that one of them is "the need to use a more precise language with a richer vocabulary. (English has about 900,000 words, while French, for example, has fewer than 100,000.)"

Where do people get this stuff? It rather looks as if Martínez-Fernández may have swallowed the self-promoting Paul Payack's specious claim that the number of words in English is creeping up toward one million. But what about the support for the claim that poor old French can only muster a hundred grand? (I know I once claimed French is a miserable and inadequate language. But I was only kidding.)

It scarcely matters what number you give in contexts like this. The sort of people who are prepared to believe that you get greater richness and precision when you have more available words will believe anything, so you can feed them any numbers you like. Not long ago a significant number of totally clueless journalists heard that a gigaword corpus had been collected and ran away with the notion that all the words in it were different, so they trumpeted that English had a billion words. (Confusing a corpus with a dictionary is roughly comparable to confusing the set of all cars now driving on American roads with the set of distinct car models available in the catalogs of US manufacturers.)

Why does the number of lexical entries in the dictionary matter to people, as opposed to the number of fax machines, or the number of lost socks?

... Precision, richness, and eloquence don't spring from dictionary page count. They're a function not of how well you've been endowed by lexicographical history but of how well you use what you've got. People don't seem to understand that vocabulary-size counting is to language as penis-length measurement is to sexiness."

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 03871.html