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Re: Order of cases

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, October 1, 2004, 17:50
Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> Darn it - I forgot novelties like the "Cambridge Latin Course" when I > wrote my mail about the 'history of the order of cases'. I stopped in the > mid 20th century. After that came the Cambridge course. IIRC the original > version of the course put the cases in the order: NOM, ACC, DAT, GEN, ABL > and called them the A-Form, B-Form, C-Form, D-Form & E-Form. The order was > determined as far as I could see by the order in which they were explained > in the course. The new names were meant to make it 'easier' because it was > thought the traditional names put pupils off.
Ouch. I do not see why names that sound like something from organic chemistry are less likely to put pupils off, but if more to the point - if the names were to be replace, why the **** think up something even less descriptive than the traditional ones? (I suppose it's democratic - the clever shouldn't get any more mnemonic clues than the stupid!) Andreas

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>