Is the difficult of a case system far over-played?
Everyone goes on about how difficult Finnish is because of it's 13 or so cases, and I've never studied Finnish actively, but the case system seems pretty straight forward to me, and not any harder than the Germanic way of expressing the same concepts - simply different.
All the Finnish cases system seems to be is small suffixes that go onto the end of words to give the same meaning as English prepositions like "in, from, to, as, without, etc).
I don't get what's so earth shateringly difficult about it, it strikes me as a case of remember the case endings (no pun intended), the small exceptions and contexts where you can't use the most obvious one, and go from there. Also, the case system seems pretty regular too.
Am I completely missing the point or is the difficult of case systems far over-played? It strikes me as just a different way of expressing concepts - not really any more difficult.
There is NOTHING difficult about it concept-wise. The thing is it's easy to make mistakes since there are so many variables that have to agree, and so you have to make long pauses when speaking while you think about what case to use.
So cases as a concept are unbelievably simple to understand, but very difficult to turn into something "automatic" that can be done without paying attention.
The measure of whether you've mastered the language is if you can speak it without thinking at all about language. With cases, this is very difficult, even advanced learners still have to mentally struggle to make sure everything agrees perfectly, despite the fact they understand them 100%.
<<Am I completely missing the point or is the difficult of case systems far over-played? >>
What about a noun case system that's highly irregular, especially when combined with number. Suppose you have 8 cases (for example) and 8 numbers (1, 2, a few, several, many, multitude/infinte, none, and indeterminate/fractional/negative/non-countable).
Suppose that the resulting 64 forms for each noun were done with a combination of suffixes, infixes, mutated consonants, vowel changes, rearranged syllables, or word split apart and the parts sprinkled around the sentence.
Further suppose that all this was full of exceptions and highly irregular. This is where the gruesome difficulty of a "real" case system comes into play.
casefearer, can you give me an example of some languages with exibit the kind of brutally irregular case-system you speak of?
Cheers
<<casefearer, can you give me an example of some languages with exibit the kind of brutally irregular case-system you speak of?>>
Imagine German singular->plural inflection expanded to 8 cases and 8 numbers.
But does Finnish incorporate tons of grammatical agreement into its case system? For example, if you wanted to say 'in the red house' or 'into the red house', would the adjective 'red' have to change form?
I read that a language like German that incorporates both cases and prepositions is more of a pain than a language like Finnish that only uses cases.
It seems Finnish adjectives do under go inflection, but from what I can work out the inflection is identical to the infelction of nouns, and therefore fairly regular. Beause of this I can't see how Finnish is a particularly difficult language.
In that case, I can't see how it is particularly difficult! It just sounds like English would be if you had to write:
'I live a redin housein'
'The cat sat the brownon wallon'
'He really had something fatagainst peopleagainst'
Ok, that would sound terribe, but you get the gist...
Or actually
'He had something fatagainsts womenagainsts'
Hmmm, maybe not...lol
<<In that case, I can't see how it is particularly difficult! It just sounds like English would be if you had to write: >>
More like this:
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Some translations into casified English:
<<A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength (i.e. it can be used for pulling, but not pushing). Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, line, string, or twine.
.>>
Becomes:
A rope is a length fibresof, twistedsof or braidedsof together to improve strength pullingfor and connectingfor. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength (i.e. it can be used pullingfor, but not pushingfor). Rope is thicker and stronger similarly constructedthan cordthan, linethan, stringthan, or twinethan.
<<Fiber, also spelled fibre, is a class of materials that are continuous filaments or are in discrete elongated pieces, similar to lengths of thread. They are very important in the biology of both plants and animals, for holding tissues together.>>
Becomes:
Fiber, also spelled fibre, is a class materialsof that are continuouss filaments or are discretesin elongatedsin piecesin, similarsin lengthsto threadof. They are very important thein biologyin bothsof plantsof and animalsof, holdingfor tissuesof together.
For some reason, i have a much more difficult time with verb tenses than noun cases. I definitely think noun cases are feared more than they should be.