some questions

Hello
   Could someone please explain the difference between
nominative/accusative languages and ergative/ablative
ones.  (I think I've got the names right.  I'm not
even sure about that...)  They seem to crop up at odd
times in various messages and I don't know what they
mean.
   Does anyone have a list of possible noun cases,
nominative, genative, etc.?  I'm trying to think of
what cases I want my conlang nouns to have, but I
don't even kow what the possibilities are.  I know
what the cases in Latin are, except the ablative.
That one has me kind of confused.  (I've been slowly
teaching myself Latin.  I got "Harrius Potter et
Philosophi[spelling?] Lapis" for Christmas and was
absolutely thrilled. :))  But are there other possible
cases?
   Also, what are the "universals" that people
occasionly mention.  Are they important?
   I'm working on an inflecting language and I've made
the case markers for nouns as suffixes.  Would it look
too strange, or break some (unknown to me) linguistic
rule to conjugate verbs by adding prefixes.  Having
suffixes for both nouns and verbs seems kind of boring
for my language. :)
   I've also been wondering about triggers, but I
think I'll just go read the "triggerness" thread...
   If anyone could answer my questions, it would be a
big help.

Thanks
---Etak

P.S.  Out of curiousity, is anyone actually fluent in
their conlangs, like able to speak a conlang without
having to think too much about it?  How many people
have conlangs that have developed that far?


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