Thread: What other languages have CASES?

I studied French, Spanish and Japanese and none of these languages had cases like in the Russian language. Is Russian unique or are there other languages out there that use cases?

I'd wager all or most slavic languages use cases. I know Bulgarian does, and I'm almost positive German (although it's not a slavic language) uses cases also....
-Fantom

Cases are certainly not unique to Russian. Greek and German have cases, and Latin had 6 cases.

Originally Posted by Cyphyr

Cases are certainly not unique to Russian. Greek and German have cases, and Latin had 6 cases.

right, I learned Latin in University, they got 6 cases, German got 4, I learned that language as well. Not that I speak any of them.

Well, English does have 4 cases for pronouns and 2 for nouns. I read that old English had 4 cases for nouns.

Most languages with the exception of Chinese and Japanese have some form of cases.

I think Finnish and Hungarian have a really large number of cases. Can't remember exactly how many, but when I read about it, I felt a whole lot better about learning Russian

Finnish has 13-15 cases depending on your dialect.

Originally Posted by Darobat

Finnish has 13-15 cases depending on your dialect.

Боже! Luckily I didn't meet a hot Finnish woman!!!!! :P
-Fantom

Originally Posted by Darobat

Most languages with the exception of Chinese and Japanese have some form of cases.

Turk languages, like Turkish, Uzbek, Tartat etc do not have cases.

Well, saying that Japanese or Turkish languages don't have cases may or may not be correct, depending on how you define case. According to Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, case is:

3 a an inflectional form indicating the sense relation (as that of subject, object, possessor, thing possessed) to another word in the context.

So, do Japanese words have inflectional forms? It depends on wether you regard suffixes -ni, -no, -ga etc as suffixes (which is the traditional approach of Russian and Soviet linguistics) or as particles. For me, Japanese most certainly has cases.

As far as Turkish languages are concerned, I don't know what Uzbek or Tatar grammarians have to say on the subject. Hoever, all Kazakh grammars that I have seen, use term "септiк" -- e.g. жатыс септiк, барыс септiк, табыс септiк (местный, направительный, винительный падежи) etc.

Example:

Мектеп -- a school
Мектепте -- in a school
Мектепке -- to a school

I think that all Slavic languages exept Macedonian have cases. Serbian and Croatian have 7 cases.

Dutch, has cases,... but they are not realy used anymore. Only in some expresions.

Originally Posted by translations.nm.ru

Well, saying that Japanese or Turkish languages don't have cases may or may not be correct, depending on how you define case. According to Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, case is:

3 a an inflectional form indicating the sense relation (as that of subject, object, possessor, thing possessed) to another word in the context.

So, do Japanese words have inflectional forms? It depends on wether you regard suffixes -ni, -no, -ga etc as suffixes (which is the traditional approach of Russian and Soviet linguistics) or as particles. For me, Japanese most certainly has cases.

As far as Turkish languages are concerned, I don't know what Uzbek or Tatar grammarians have to say on the subject. Hoever, all Kazakh grammars that I have seen, use term "септiк" -- e.g. жатыс септiк, барыс септiк, табыс септiк (местный, направительный, винительный падежи) etc.

Example:

Мектеп -- a school
Мектепте -- in a school
Мектепке -- to a school

Kazakh language is turkish as well, so, probably you are right. I do not speak neither Uzbek nor Tartar.

polish has 7 cases. actually id dare to say most of the slavic languages have cases.

German is a case based language. Only from what I have seen it is the definite and indefinite articles that morphs as opposed to the noun in Russian. Also, changes only occur with the masculine definite and indefinite article, der and ein such as
Ich habe einen Hund or Ich sehe den Hund.
Ich habe einen Hund means I have a dog.
Iche sehe den Hun means I see te dog.

Kein also is affected.
example: Ich habe keinen Hund I don't have a dog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases

Originally Posted by mp510

German is a case based language. Only from what I have seen it is the definite and indefinite articles that morphs as opposed to the noun in Russian. Also, changes only occur with the masculine definite and indefinite article, der and ein such as
Ich habe einen Hund or Ich sehe den Hund.
Ich habe einen Hund means I have a dog.
Iche sehe den Hun means I see te dog.

Kein also is affected.
example: Ich habe keinen Hund I don't have a dog.

Not exactly. In the accusative case masculine words are the only ones affected, but in dative and genitive feminine and neutrum nouns are affected to, e.g.

Ich spiele mit dem Kind
Ich helfe der Frau

Your sentences are completely correct though

Originally Posted by Kamion

Originally Posted by mp510

German is a case based language. Only from what I have seen it is the definite and indefinite articles that morphs as opposed to the noun in Russian. Also, changes only occur with the masculine definite and indefinite article, der and ein such as
Ich habe einen Hund or Ich sehe den Hund.
Ich habe einen Hund means I have a dog.
Iche sehe den Hun means I see te dog.

Kein also is affected.
example: Ich habe keinen Hund I don't have a dog.

Not exactly. In the accusative case masculine words are the only ones affected, but in dative and genitive feminine and neutrum nouns are affected to, e.g.

Ich spiele mit dem Kind
Ich helfe der Frau

Your sentences are completely correct though

Thanks. i didn't know that!

Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian (all in the same family) have some 20 odd cases each.

They are easier to use than Russian cases however.

If I use Hungarian as an example:

Instead of using prepositions, endings are added to nouns.
E.g.
Magyarorsz