Help, How do you know what is the noun's each case like?
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Ilopeorec
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Help, How do you know what is the noun's each case like?
I mean, how to form a noun's five cases. Is there any rules for that?
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Bert
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It shouldn't matter which textbook you are using, this should be covered in it.
There are different edings to memorize and some general rules to make this easier.
Don't you understand your textbook? If that is the case then please be specific what it is you don't understand. It will make answering this question a bit easier. (To answer the question as it now stands would pretty well mean to write out the first few chapters of a textbook
)
There are different edings to memorize and some general rules to make this easier.
Don't you understand your textbook? If that is the case then please be specific what it is you don't understand. It will make answering this question a bit easier. (To answer the question as it now stands would pretty well mean to write out the first few chapters of a textbook
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chad
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hi, yes it's obtuse, because of the history of how the language developed: it's all tangled and v complex: it can't be simplified by a textbook really, you either (a) explain it all or (b) just give the declension forms, each has its advantages, (a) gives you the patterns but (b) requires far less memorising which is good for beginners: you don't want to learn everything straight away.
e.g. the first declension: you'd hope because it's "one" declension there's one rule/way to decline words in it: actually it's a mix of 2 ancient suffixes having a general "a" theme, which are therefore all grouped generally by grammarians into the "first declension".
in homer, there's the "long alpha" theme, which carries through words like qea/ in the sg. in a pure form (e.g. the sg. gen. is qea=s). then there's the same theme but in its ionic form eta throughout (a change which happened around the 7th century bc), e.g. boulh/ (gen. sg. is boulh=s). this is also 1st declension fem.
but then there's another pre-homeric ending -ya, which following loss of "y" became short alpha in the nom and acc. sg. (e.g. qa/lassa) but became eta in the gen and dat (e.g. qala/sshs). i.e. these come from a different suffix altogether but are still 1st declension fem.
the plural forms of these words however have blended completely historically; they're the same.
i personally find the history of this stuff helpful for learning the declensions and their differences, but it's info overload for others so textbooks don't tell you too much of the rules/history, they just say "memorise qea/, boulh/" &c.
e.g. the first declension: you'd hope because it's "one" declension there's one rule/way to decline words in it: actually it's a mix of 2 ancient suffixes having a general "a" theme, which are therefore all grouped generally by grammarians into the "first declension".
in homer, there's the "long alpha" theme, which carries through words like qea/ in the sg. in a pure form (e.g. the sg. gen. is qea=s). then there's the same theme but in its ionic form eta throughout (a change which happened around the 7th century bc), e.g. boulh/ (gen. sg. is boulh=s). this is also 1st declension fem.
but then there's another pre-homeric ending -ya, which following loss of "y" became short alpha in the nom and acc. sg. (e.g. qa/lassa) but became eta in the gen and dat (e.g. qala/sshs). i.e. these come from a different suffix altogether but are still 1st declension fem.
the plural forms of these words however have blended completely historically; they're the same.
i personally find the history of this stuff helpful for learning the declensions and their differences, but it's info overload for others so textbooks don't tell you too much of the rules/history, they just say "memorise qea/, boulh/" &c.
After printing psilord's table on declensions, I looked for similarities between them, and I learned them easely. It's not that hard, really.-
psilord
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You'd be surprised on the difficulty. It isn't so much the declensions themselves that's the tricky part, it is remembering what gender the noun or adjective is and which of the few forms for a particular case did you need to use.....
After your vocabulary gets to about a couple of hundred words and you start using all three cases, there will be a small time of confusion. :)
The only things I'm wary of so far are recognition of vowel contractions in verb tenses and accenting.
I find that simply hand copying the declension tables (ONLY THE ONES YOU REALLY NEED TO STUDY AT THAT TIME) over and over and over and over and, well, you get the picture, get it so I can recall them or recognize them almost immediately. Every now and then, I simply try to write a particular table out from memory and see how well I did.
After your vocabulary gets to about a couple of hundred words and you start using all three cases, there will be a small time of confusion. :)
The only things I'm wary of so far are recognition of vowel contractions in verb tenses and accenting.
I find that simply hand copying the declension tables (ONLY THE ONES YOU REALLY NEED TO STUDY AT THAT TIME) over and over and over and over and, well, you get the picture, get it so I can recall them or recognize them almost immediately. Every now and then, I simply try to write a particular table out from memory and see how well I did.