Cases, Genders, Nominative, Instrumental...WHY?

]I have been so preoccupied learning what, where and when variations of grammar are necessary that I have never askied WHY the language evolved into such a complex one.

Jednego małego kurczaka.

Why are Jeden, mały and kurczak so drastically altered?

Hehe, i know ;)
Actually many other languages used to have all those grammar variations, many of them simplified their languages... Old English had these kind of variations, German still have them, Icelandic is one of the most difficult grammars cause the language has almost not evolved since the first people came to the land.

It's actually the other way round (at least that's what I've been taught).
Polish is so complex because it's way behind most of modern European languages in terms of evolution, which naturally leads to simplifying the rules, losing case endings etc. etc.


Our mutual mindreading is not a scam it seems... !!! :P

I created a simplified Polish (for fun, yeah...), with no grammar variations, no genres, so very simplified ;) I called it Noopolsk, say [nołpolsk], it means "new Polish" ;)


You've just realized it ? :)

Examples please.


Seems I have.

Ok :

"Ja nei mogg spast"
"Ja eist jak en mal kmor gobend av tvai okerna" (this is from a poetry called "Nebben Map" i started to write)

Do you understand something ?... ;)

I can't sleep.


???


I bet it's all about me :P

Good ! ^^ Both "Ja nei mogg" and "Ja mogg nei" are okay... :P



That's funny, you don't understand it, but you know that it's about you...And you may be right, LoL, this is the translation :
I am like a little cloud lost in your eyes... ;P
And "Nebben Map" is the "Map of the Sky". Nebb = niebo, Nebben = the sky.

My english teacher said the opposite. That english is archaic. Polish has more complicated grammar, so it's more developed.

Modern English archaic?

Read Beowulf in Old English and see if you understand anything? The language changed a lot. It used to have case and other inflections, just like Polish. Although less of them.

Yeah! Good luck with this one! :D

HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned
geong in geardum, þone God sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat,
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile; him þæs Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,
Beowulf wæs breme --- blæd wide sprang---
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftumon fæder bearme

I like Old English, i don't know how to pronounce it, i don't understand it, but i like the way it's written :)

Consider yourself lucky. I had a course in Old English at university - 9 months long!!! :P It was a nightmare! Suffice to say I don't remember ANYTHING! ;)

Gaelic will test u. Please write me the phonetic version of slainte mhaithe, or ceud mille failte

Polish does look like it has too many cases. Why things fall into one case and not another doesn't, to me, always make very much sense, but that is how it evolved. Never mind - we just have to live with it. But English...

Gender:
"She's quite a fast car."
"The Dog - he just ran out into the road."

Tense:
There's too much to say about English tenses, so I won't.

Who / Whom
Irregular verbs - thought / think, eat / ate / eaten, etc.
Irregualr nouns - foot / feet. How tall are you? Five foot eight!


It's pretty much pronounced as it is spelt.
The ae-type letter is like a short modern English 'a'.
The ð is like the th in that.
The þ is like the th in thin.
The c on its own is always a k sound.

*handing the thread over to the experts...*

Believe me, the declension isn't the worst thing that can happen to one little chicken, it grows and become someone's food. Now that I call altered :)

Do you mean a linguistic change or are we straying on to vegetarian issues?

As z_darius's 'youtube' clip it sounds very Scandinavian with bits of Dutch IMHO.

Back to the subject.......
Why is 'Jeden mały kurczak' considered ACCUSATIVE?
What rules govern the inclusion of words/phrases into the ACCUSATIVE GROUP?

It isn't, it's nominative. The accusative is like the nominative for non-animates. For animates (such as a chicken) it looks like the genitive - i.e. jednego małego kurczaka.
Generally the accusative is used following prepositions that require the accusative or in sentences where there is a direct object.

For example:
The chicken is small - chicken is the subject -> Nominative
I like chicken - I am the subject, the chicken is the direct object -> Accusative

Strangely (for me at least), Polish uses the genetive when you negate a sentence that had an object in the accusative - e.g.

I don't like chicken - chicken changes to genitive.

Hope that helps and I haven't just created more confusion...

Let me rephrase.............

Why is it correct to change the nominative 'Jeden mały kurczak' into the accusative 'Jednego małego kurczaka'.
I know 'kurczak' is masc so we opt for 'mały/mała/małe' (The masc form of the adjective that correctly fits the masc noun of 'kurczak')
I'm just getting used to genders and case endings, nominative and instrumental THEN this pops up.........
.........but, unlike nominative and instrumental, I'm unsure of the reason or puepose?

Your explanation (above) went some way towards helping me understand.

Not sure I catch what you are getting at, so I will try and cover too much rather than not enough:

In English we rely on word order to determine meaning:

Ben hits Paul

is totally different to:

Paul hits Ben

or we rely on helper words (prepositions) such as "for" or "to":

e.g. Ben gave the book to Paul

In Polish, as you know, the cases tell us who is doing what:

Paweł bije Bena

is still the same as:

Bena bije Paweł

despite the different word order because Ben is in the accusative case in both sentences (because of the "-a" ending).

In the sentence:

Ben gives the book to Paul

the subject is Ben (so Ben is nominative), the direct object is the book (so the book takes the accusative) and Paul is the indirect object or receiving object (so Paul takes the dative).

Thus in Polish:

Ben daje książkę Pawłowi

Here książka takes the fem. acc. ending -ę and Paweł takes the masc. dat. ending -owi

Hope that helps.

No answer to this, Polish uses cases just like Czech and most of Slavic languages. Bad luck for you Britons and others... :-(

Yes. It helps alot. I know understand the overall concept.
I'm still a little unsure of what will constitute the direct object in other sentences but feel practise and experience will soon make this a thing of the past.
I'm going to try and understand the grammar of some English sentences in this respect, as well as continue my Polish studies.

to learn simple genders, look at lesson 2 [url=www.languagelearninglab.com][/url]

The second phonetically would be caad meel falthay.

The first word of the first phrase is pronounced Slanj.

I used to do it a bit in primary school but was never into languages when i was younger.

But yeah, it's a dead hard language, just so ancient and untampered with, they have no new words so say the english for things like internet and stuff. Quite fascinating all the same. It's the cases and genders and sheer complexity that attracted me to polish.

Why?
Becuase we had no Norman invasion!