And I don’t trust anyone who uses arbitrary standards to judge someone. 
There are two kinds of people I can’t stand. Those who are intolerant of other peoples’ cultures, and the Dutch.
My own rule until now has been “never trust a man who hates lentils.” I may have to amend it.
I agree… Hey wait a minute! Something not right here.
You could see it as a compliment: apparently, the Dutch are tolerant of other peoples’ cultures. I wish it were true…
Ingrid
Well, actually, it’s just an quotation from the last Austin Powers movie. I have nothing against the Dutch. The Belgians, however…
Just for completeness: The traditional way for ordering the German cases is Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ. That is the way we learn it in school and also the usage of (popular) grammars I know of. The ordering Nom. Akk. Gen. Dat. may be used for pedagogical or linguistic reasons. So traditional grammars also use this ordering (more or less) for Latin and Greek - but you can also find nom. acc. gen. dat. being used.
Heh, I like what Auberon said.
So, this all comes from the Greeks who first in Europe ordered the cases:
NOM
GEN
DAT
ACC
VOC
No Ablative, of course. And so the Roman’s kept the same order and just stuck Ablative at the end:
NOM
GEN
DAT
ACC
VOC
ABL
But at some point (probably more in modern times), Latin would come to embody the vocative-last policy (due to its rarity, no doubt):
NOM
GEN
DAT
ACC
ABL
VOC
And that is the traditional order.
The placement of Accusative second is common in Northern Europe, and I find it really annoying (especially in LINGVA LATINA). The notion must come from a desire to expose the similarity between Accusative and Nominative — I find this unhelpful, since the Genitive is listed second always in the dictionary.
The “traditional” case order of nom/gen/dat/acc/abl is arbitrary and as it turns out irrational because it ignores the very helpful phenonmenon of syncretism, where similar endings are grouped together. Taking this into account, the more logical order of cases in Latin, German, Russian and probably Greek is nom/acc/gen/dat/abl. The accusative is often identical with the nominative in all these languages (in Latin neuters, in German articles, in Russian alternating between looking the same as either nominative or genitive), and in Latin shoehorning accusative between genitive and ablative also disguises the similarity between the dative and ablative.
Textbooks everywhere have been using the nom/acc/gen/dat order in German for some time, because it’s easier. The same goes for Russian texts, which use nom/acc/gen/prepositional(=locative)/dative/instrumental(=ablative, sort of). In addition to syncretism between cases, there is also syncretism between the masculine and neuter genders in all three languages. It is entirely practical to create tables which combine masculine with neuter into one column, because the endings only differ in the nominative and accusative.
Memorizing inflections is a pain in the neck no matter how you slice it, so why not minimize the pain? And keep the vocative out of these tables! It’s so rarely different from the nominative it makes no sense to clutter them with superfluous entries.
But syncretism is a false friend; it is, in my opinion and my personal experience, better for the memory to recall the repetition of, say, the ablative -o from the dative -o, or the ablative -ibus after the dative -ibus, after the accusative has passed by — if it’s spaced out, the memory is stretched. For the sake of analogy, it’s like a runner stretching before a short race (it’s harder to stretch if you’re not used to it), as opposed to just running, which is easier at first, but makes life harder later. The traditional order is harder at first, but easier in the long run, because then one is much less obsessed with the “order,” and concentrates instead on the “case” — As my students have used both tradition and syncretic case orders, some of my students have complained about not being prepared for a quiz because they memorized the wrong order; they did not do what the others did: learned the case ending, rather than attempting to use the order as a crutch.
Not really, unfortunately, at least as far as Russian textbooks are concerned. I used/referenced 3 or 4 of them when I was learning, and it seemed like every single one of them gave a different table for noun declension. This was extremely irritating coming from Greek and Latin, where the order is pretty much fixed (within individual countries, at least).
Another way to learn Latin case endings is to rotate the tables 90 degrees - then the rows represent the declensions and the cases appear in columns. This way the similarities and differences of cases can be compared across declensions, and certain things jump out at you. One of these is that there is syncretism to some extent in declensions as well as cases, especially between the 2nd and 4th and the 3rd and 5th.
Using the case order from left to right of Nom/Acc/Gen/Dat/Abl, declension order from top to bottom of 1st/2nd/4th/3rd/5th and tables for singular and plural, the nom. and acc. non-neuter genders look like this:
-a -am
-us -um
-us -um
-xx -em
-es -em
-ae -as
-i -os
-us -us
-es -es
-es -es
Playing around with information like this can be a very helpful for learning, in my experience. Writing them down a few times will eventually get them to stick in your memory so you won’t need to refer to the generally klutzy, confusing, overblown and space-wasting nightmare versions found in most textbooks!
That reminds me – are there any attempts to describe the inflection of nouns in Latin or Greek on a case by case basis, i.e., this is how you form the accusative, this is how you form the genitive, etc.? This would basically ignore the fact that Latin and Greek inflection is structured in terms of paradigms/declensions but I know that a lot of linguists today don’t view paradigms as being basic elements of abstract morphology and just describe things in terms of a morpheme for accusative, a morpheme for genitive, etc., which have different forms in different contexts. This works nicely for languages like Turkish where there’s basically one declension and so you can describe each case differently (and Turkish is even nicer in that the case inflections are separate from the inflections for number) but I’ve seen it done for German where the inflections are simple enough that you can get away with it. But has anybody tried it for Latin or Greek? I have seen something similar for the verbal morphology of Modern Greek and it was extremely convoluted (and sort of sneaked in historical developments as if they were modern rules, which seemed odd to me) but you could get some useful wide-ranging rules, like that -m rule for the accusative singular.
hi, theodosius’ canons is the closest thing i could think of (he tells you how to decline nouns without following the traditional declension paradigms):
http://schmidhauser.us/docs/apollonius-bib/Bekker.1821.pdf
i don’t think it’s quite what you were referring to though. my other grammars, recent and old, for both languages, follow the traditional paradigms.
cheers, chad 
My New Testament book uses NAGDV, so I do so out of habit. What I may try doing is use NVAGD in the future, since the vocative and nominative are frequently the same, and other times very similar.
In Sanskrit there are six cases classified as kārakas which relate to the verb, the genetive is called sambandha because it denotes a relationship between nouns and the vocative (sambodhana) is also called a vishesha of the prathamā, meaning a variation of the nominative. The numbering of the cases is very practical for memorisation, because the similar endings are placed close to each other. The dual endings in particular are very similar to each other. In some books the vocative is placed at the end of the table and in some books it is places after the nominative. I prefer the placement after the nominative, because it is easier to remember this way.
The cases are indeed called by number, but they also have a more descriptive name. This table gives an overview of the cases in Sanskrit:
http://chitrapurmath.net/sanskrit/supp004.pdf
1a. prathamā (nominative) = kartṛ (agent)
1b. " visheshaṇa (vocative) = sambodhana (adress)
2. dvitīyā (accusative) = karma (patient)
3. tṛtīyā (instrumental) = karaṇa (means)
4. caturhī (dative) = sampradāna (recipient)
5. pañcamī (ablative) = apādāna (source)
6. ṣaṣṭhī (genitive) = sambandha (relation)
7. saptamī (locative) = adhikaraṇa (locus)
Hello, guys!
I am from Russia and I can assure you that the correct order of cases in Russian language is:
Nominative (Именительный)
Genetive (Родительный)
Dative (Дательный)
Accusative (Винительный)
Instrumental (Творительный)
Prepositional (Предложный)
There are several mnemonics used to remember this order, for example:
“Иван Романович, Дайте Вашу Трубку Покурить” (Ivan Romanovich, give [me] your pipe [to] smoke")
Just a note. Thanks for your attention!