Grammatical Cases: Why are they considered so hard?

[Serpent]

Wow this thread got long while I was in Finland

Declension at least allows flexibility in sentence structure that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. What exactly does gender grant a language? The (very, very rarely used) possibility to recycle the “same” word for two or three different meanings by altering its gender? It’s kind of a mystery to me why it would evolve at all. I guess in some ancient age it probably carried semantic weight that has long since been lost...instead now acting mostly as a way to catch out non-natives who have otherwise mastered the language.

Well, it evolved from the noun classes.

What does gender grant a language, you ask in English I don't know how you feel about the usefulness of referring to humans by "he" or "she". If we treat it as useful, where do we stop? Do we indicate the gender in all nouns referring to humans? Family, professions, cultural, political and other kinds of identities - that's actually a huge subset of language! And what about animals? (or "animals other than humans" )

As for adding flexibility, grammatical gender is nearly useless without cases, imo. (Not sure if the usefulness of replacing inanimate nouns with gendered pronouns has been brought up)

Oh and spelling reforms are very superficial from a linguist's point of view.

[tarvos]

Honestly, the only reason I mind gendered pronouns is because it'd teach the naysayers that I am a woman, whereas if the language didn't reflect that they could still insult me tacitly without me ever figuring it out. Now I can identify transphobia by checking people's pronoun and verb usage (when verbs reflect gender as in Slavic and Semitic languages).

[tarvos]

[i]This is my Dad’s hat.

A) Das ist der Hut meines Vaters. (Genitive)

I’d never say this in spoken language. Rather I’d say it like this:

B) Das ist der Hut von meinem Vater. OR C) Das ist meinem Vater sein Hut. (both Dative)

You're right about this special construction. In this case, sentence A sounds a bit formal and would probably only be used in writing. However, it would be totally natural to say something like "Das ist Papas Hut" (That's daddy's hat).

Once again, sentence C is overly colloquial or even dialectal. Please don't actively use this construction or you will make a fool out of yourself.

Sentence B is the most neutral one in spoken language. However, in writing, I'd strongly recommend to use sentence A.

Stating the genitive is dead is a gross exaggeration IMHO. I use it every day and it has nothing elitist or snobistic about it. It can have this touch in certain archaic constructions like "Ich war seiner überdrüssig" ("I was fed up with him"), but that's a totally different ballgame.

As I normally don't try and write like Thomas Mann, and all my friends are my age, I use B) at least. C) sounds like I am trying to transfer my colloquial Dutch to German... and likely would make a lot of people laugh.

[Josquin]

You don't have to be Thomas Mann in order to use the genitive...

But in addition to what Cavesa wrote, might I add that the perception of the "easiest" language is very much a subjective one. For a Japanese person, Korean is the easiest language, for an Arab, I guess Hebrew would be the easiest to learn, for a German it's Dutch, for a Polish person it's Ukrainian. It very much depends on your native language and how similar the target language is to yours.

I seriously recommend s_allard to take Chung's advice and branch out of the FIGS languages. Your eyes will be opened!

[s_allard]

Here is what I wrote (emphasis added):

Compared to all the languages mentioned here - except for Indonesian of which I know nothing but that I will put on my bucket list - English is the easiest language to learn despite its horrendous spelling.

The languages mentioned in the blog - as far as I can recall include Russian, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Czech, Haitian Creole, etc. With the exception of Haitian Creole, English is the only one without grammatical gender and/or cases. English has its complications and complexities but of the list given, and with the exception of Haitian Creole, it is the easiest to learn. That doesn't mean it's easy. Now, I will admit that for a Spanish speaker Italian is probably easier to learn than English and vice versa but my fundamental point is that the absence of grammatical gender and noun cases makes a language generally easier to learn.

[Josquin]

English has its complications and complexities but of the list given, and with the exception of Haitian Creole, it is the easiest to learn. That doesn't mean it's easy. Now, I will admit that for a Spanish speaker Italian is probably easier to learn than English and vice versa but my fundamental point is that the absence of grammatical gender and noun cases makes a language generally easier to learn.

I don't follow. You're basically contradicting yourself here. The question is always: "Easy for whom?"

As Cavesa has shown, English may not have gender and case, but it has other pitfalls. Just to add some more complexities of English to the list: differentiation between adjective and adverb (doesn't exist in German), using progressive vs. simple tenses, knowing whether a verb is followed by the infinitive or the gerund, gerundial and participial constructions in general, and using prepositions correctly.

Also, Mandarin Chinese has neither case nor gender nor any conjugation of the verb. Not many Westerners think Chinese is easy though. Morphological complexity isn't the same as difficulty.

[s_allard]

You don't have to be Thomas Mann in order to use the genitive...

But in addition to what Cavesa wrote, might I add that the perception of the "easiest" language is very much a subjective one. For a Japanese person, Korean is the easiest language, for an Arab, I guess Hebrew would be the easiest to learn, for a German it's Dutch, for a Polish person it's Ukrainian. It very much depends on your native language and how similar the target language is to yours.

I seriously recommend s_allard to take Chung's advice and branch out of the FIGS languages. Your eyes will be opened!

Thanks for the good advice, I would certainly agree that certain languages are easier than others because of similarities. I have no doubt that Dutch (no cases) is relatively easy for German speakers. Portuguese is relatively easy for Spanish speakers, Hebrew for Arabic speakers, etc. But I would be curious to know how many Germans speak Dutch relative to English, how many Spanish speakers around the world speak Portuguese or Italian relative to English. I would be especially curious to find out how many Arab speakers in Lebanon, Irak, Saudi Arabia, etc. speak Hebrew relative to English. And last but not least how many Japanese speak Korean relative to English.

[Josquin]

Your point being what?

[tastyonions]

But I would be curious to know how many Germans speak Dutch relative to English, how many Spanish speakers around the world speak Portuguese or Italian relative to English. I would be especially curious to find out how many Arab speakers in Lebanon, Irak, Saudi Arabia, etc. speak Hebrew relative to English. And last but not least how many Japanese speak Korean relative to English.

Huh? People will learn anything if it will double their prospective salary. Easy or hard.

If Portuguese or Hebrew or Russian had English's economic dominance and cultural reach, you can bet that just as many people would be learning them as learn English now.

[s_allard]

My fundamental point is that all things considered the absence of grammatical gender and noun cases gives a language an advantage in terms of being easier to learn. In passing, we see this in creoles and pidgins. One of the first things to go will be the complexities like gender and cases.