Cases. Yeah. What do I think about cases?

You know, Even now...year 7...sometimes I "get it" and it flows, and I know the cases are right, and I think..."pah! this is easy, why was this a problem?", and other days it's like "What the f...!".

In the beginning I tried to memorise tables, and succeeded to a degree, but then couldn't use them because my brain couldn't process it fast enough to speak...so I gave up, and then somewhere my brain just "got it", and some of the cases came right, and then a bit more...and then even now some days it's like a stream of nominative case...

...but you know what...Russians still understand you...LOL! And those I've spoken with love that I can speak to them.

Well done with sticking with it...it does get easier...read and listen a lot...and you will get there...and maybe I will too some day ; )

English also has strict word order to convey the function of each word in the sentence. Languages with cases can move words around to some extent because the cases carry that information.

Btw, I am Russian, learning Finnish. Russian cases are nothing compared to finnish system. Case endings make up half of the Finnish language and they are truly replacing prepositions (unlike in Russian)

Sounds like you're ready to take on Finnish now :).

My understanding of cases in German and Icelandic is one that has gotten a lot more intuitive over time. I have logically understood them for 15 years, but being able to fluently use them correctly in conversation or hear them (including when someone uses them wrong) is only something I have been able to do for the past year.

I've become a firm believer in the idea, that the features that are hardest to learn and internalize are those that are more "complex" than those of our native language. (For an example - for Russians learning English, articles.)

Ha! I just found a russian grammar book that actually describes cases the way it makes sense in my head. So I might be right. Which is motivating.

The book is called "The Case Book for Russian".

I am learning Slovak and other cased languages. Cases aren´t prepositions, however they do go with prepositions in particular relationships to the nouns. As far as I know, all languages are noun lead. Russian is the same. the noun is most important, then your relationship to the noun (verbs). I would argue having a logical understanding of cases is really a fools gold, as I do and it doesn´t help whatsoever.

Having a SUBCONCIOUS understanding of cases would be far better! That can only be developed by using the language and processing experiences. I asked myself how Slovaks learn cases and I was curious to hear what kind of mistakes kids make. They actually don´t make so many mistakes with cases, according to the people I talked to, because they learn it in a far more simpler way (their name, the names of their mum/dad, objects they use, and they NEVER QUESTION IT as other language speakers do!).

Thus with Slavic languages I think the best thing you can do is talk, do activities and learn how to explain yourself. Then you will quickly learn how to alternate your name or a name you use. The advantage of the case system is actually, despite how complicated it appears to me as an English speaker, Slovak is actually much shorter when put into translation apps like google translate, because far more information is conveyed through the suffixes.

This was quite strange for me, as my Slavic students writing English would always make massive sentences up to 40 words long. But in Slovak the relationships between things are clear despite the order the words are in the sentence, all due to the cases.

Cases are really complicated but they like the knife and fork at a dinner table. They pick the nouns up. In English the equivalent would be determiners and word order. Explaining Slovaks adjectival order as a concept is very confusing for them because in Slavic languages the adjectives are aligned through cases so there is no need to order them.

It is an interesting alternative, but if I was staying up all night I´d never have though you could make languages like this when I have English as a template. The first word I´d create in my own language would have been "the", then when you find out Slavic languages don´t have that it is a big paradigm shift.

In my opinion, you´d learn to unconsciously get cases through carrying out processes and kids stories far easier then consciously understanding them. I took a year of lessons in Slovak, and despite all the best intentions, the material was set up around cases and grammar but not vocab building. I logically would have thought this was a good idea, but it is terrible. The teacher could pull off the top of her head fascinating charts of how things declinate but it didn´t help one bit. You need to learn them all as individual words, as depressing as that sounds, and it isn´t actually that hard. After a few hundred words are mastered it will become somewhat clear. That is why Lingq is so good, because it just forces you to accept that. That is also how the natives learn them, as individual words when a context comes up. Actually doesn´t take so long as it sounds when you get going because kids have usually got a good working knowledge of cases at 5 years old. So what is our excuse?

ONCE you have a vocabulary to organise of a few hundred/thousand words, then you can really make use of understanding cases. It makes literally no sense explaining them to a person who doesn´t use them. It is like explaining to tiktok celebrities to a person from the 18th Century. The good thing is once you do master those, other Slavic languages become a walk in the park.

Congrats! Now that you understand what they are, here is the real test: can you correctly use genetive plural case?

Russian speakers: "muahahahahahaha"

Congratulations.