# enumerating the cases



## djwebb1969

Hmm. 

I asked someone (a Czech man who spoke fluent Russian) what the vocative for Petr was - and when he understood my question, he realised I meant the pátý pád! The 5th case.

Actually, in my mind, I meant the 2nd case. Because I learned Latin at school, and the order was Nom, Voc, Acc, Gen, Dat, Abl (=ablative). 

I find the Czech order of Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Voc, Loc, Inst very counter-intuitive, not least because the Accusative case does not differ much from the Nominative. 

I see James Naughton in his Essential Czech Grammar (Routledge, p25) recommends learning the cases as follows: Nom, Acc, Gen, Dat, Loc, Inst, Voc - this is because the Nom and Acc are often identical and the Dat and Loc singular are often identical, and so it makes sense to keep cases often identical together. 

This means the traditional order 1-7 preferred in Czech grammars is actually illogical and poorly thought-out. 

Just a thought on an unexpected difficulty in learning Czech!

An example, on p26 of that work, is pán, which you could "recite" thus (in the singular):

pán
pána
pána
pánoví
pánoví
pánem
pane


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## Enquiring Mind

It's just convention, there's no logical reason why the Czech case enumeration should follow the Latin, or German, or Hungarian, or Finnish  (God help us). 

Although James Naughton's grammars are very good, I strongly disagree with his recommendation, which I think is badly misguided. Why do we learn Czech? Because we want to understand Czech, be understood, and communicate with Czechs.  In my (obviously subjective) experience, Czechs learn at school to identify the cases as first, second, third, fourth etc. Non-linguists will not necessarily be familiar with the terms nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative etc.  I've even heard well-educated Czechs (teachers) having to do a double-take and think which case "vokativ" is supposed to be.

If you follow Naughton's recommendation, you'll refer to 2nd case and expect Czechs to understand you to mean accusative, 7th case and expect it to be understood as vocative, etc. This will cause no end of confusion when you talk to Czechs about grammar.  In Czech, druhý pád can only mean genitive, pátý pád can only mean vocative, sedmý pád can only mean instrumental, etc. В чужой монастырь со своим уставом не ходят .

This declension pattern for pán? Češi budou kroutit hlavou!

[*Do cizího kláštera se se svým řádem nechodí - not an established proverb in Czech, but easily understood. Note the double occurrence of "se", their respective  collocations, and the *fixed position* (in this sentence with no auxiliary verb, second "element") of the blue reflexive "se". The red "se" is "s" before a sibilant, as in Russian.]


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## djwebb1969

I see what you mean, thanks!


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## hypoch

Enquiring Mind, that was spot on!


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## werrr

Enquiring Mind said:


> It's just convention, there's no logical reason why the Czech case enumeration should follow the Latin, or German, or Hungarian, or Finnish  (God help us).


What is convention but following?

All Czech enumeration, traditional German enumeration and traditional Latin enumeration follow classical Greek enumeration. Your pseudo-Latin numbering is a 19th-century oddity of English provenance.


> If you follow Naughton's recommendation, you'll refer to 2nd case and expect Czechs to understand you to mean accusative, 7th case and expect it to be understood as vocative, etc. This will cause no end of confusion when you talk to Czechs about grammar.  In Czech, druhý pád can only mean genitive, pátý pád can only mean vocative, sedmý pád can only mean instrumental, etc. В чужой монастырь со своим уставом не ходят .


Yet, there is no space for confusion between Czech and German as there is this clear correspondence between the cases:

German <-> Czech

NOM <-> NOM or VOC
GEN <-> GEN or LOC
DAT <-> DAT or INS
ACC <-> ACC

1 <-> 1 or 5
2 <-> 2 or 6
3 <-> 3 or 7
4 <-> 4

The German-Latin and Czech-Latin correspondences are not so straightforward, but they are still convenient.


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## ilocas2

the use of number enumeration of cases is seen in the lyrics of song Šestej pád from Dan Bárta and Ewa Farna:

V hlavě nám hraje šestej pád
a srdce sedmým bije

In our heads the sixth case plays
and the heart beats with the seventh one


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## Bohemos

Zde je skloňování onoho substantiva ("pán", "pán") v singuláru, uvedené délky výše se mi tedy příliš nezamlouvají.


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