Re: Order of cases

Hey!

On Thursday 30 September 2004 17:49, Philip Newton wrote:

 > On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:19:20 +0200, Henrik Theiling
<theiling@absint.com <mailto:theiling@...>> wrote:
 > >        m.sg.  n.sg.  f.sg.  pl.
 > >   NOM  der    das    die    die
 > >   ACC  den    das    die    die
 > >   DAT  dem    dem    der    den
 > >   GEN  des    des    der    der
 >
 > Why do you use this particular order?
 >
 > Standard German order (as much as it has one) is
 > NOM-GEN-DAT-ACC. This is so common that some even use
 > e.g. "dritter Fall" (third case) for "Dativ", etc.
 > (Interesting snippet: IIRC, "case" in this sense comes
 > from Latin "cadere" 'to fall', from the idea that the
 > oblique cases "fall" away from the nominative; the German
 > "Fall" is, I presume, a straight translation of this.)

In primary school, about in 3rd grade or so, we learnt about
the cases in the order Henrik used IIRC. But when we had
finished them, we were said that NOM = 1st case, GEN = 2nd
case, DAT = 3rd case, ACC = 4th case. When my teacher was
talking about "2nd" case or so, I never knew which one she
meant, until I got used to the standard order
NOM-GEN-DAT-ACC after some time.

However, Taliesin, genitive is the least used case in
German. In colloquial speech you use preposition + dative
most of the time. It's similar with the two subjunctives
(Konjuktiv I and II). In colloquial speech, the use of
subjunctive I is pretty rare, you use subjunctive II for I
and generally "würde" (would) + verb.INF for II.

Carsten

--
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Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
  -> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri