For one, Latin has more fancy rules than French. I guess the subjunctive is probably something English speakers might consider fancy, but Latin has that too. Latin has more times that are conjugations of the core verb (rather than needing auxiliary verbs), has grammatical cases (like German, but two more if you include vocative) and, idk, also just feels fancier in general.

I’ll admit it’s been years since I actually read any Latin and that I only have a surface level understanding of all languages mentioned except for French, but this post reads like it’s about the stereotypes of the countries rather than being about the languages themselves.

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (6 children)

First, I wouldn't count the vocative but let's not get into this debate. Counting cases, Russian wins until you include other balto slavic languages or even Uralic ones.

Fancy is a very subjective term. Auxiliary verbs are fancy in their own way. From an orthographical viewpoint, French is quite fancy with all the silent letters, the way vocals are pronounced and stuff. French had like one spelling "reform" and it was like let's make it more obvious we decent from Latin. Grammar wise it's just like the other romance languages from what I know. They once got rid of the silent and put a "gravestone" on the letter before (^) that has no other meaning than here was a silent s. Wouldn't you call that fancy? Who would call it fancy? ~~Mwa~~ Moi!

[–] Dewe@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Haha I decline your proposal not to get into that debate: the vocative is a grammatical case. Maybe not every noun can be put in the vocative, but it’s definitely one of the cases. Even the locative is a case, even though only a couple of nouns use it.

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To be clear, in general the vocative is a case eg in Czech and other balto slavic languages (except eg standard Russian while colloquial Russian is developing a new unrelated one).

In Latin tho, it's more a relict. Other cases have relicts, too, still I wouldn't say Latin has the locative.

I would argue that being a relict is a spectrum. Technically, it is a case with many syncretism to nominative, since it is obligatory for those nouns. In the context of LAtiN hAs sOo0 ManY cAsES, it's not.

[–] Dewe@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Ohio State University seems to think these are both cases: https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/Cases/latin-case .

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

and there are vestiges of a seventh, the Locative.

I called it relicts but it's basically what I said. Maybe vestiges is the better word in English, in German we say "Relikte".

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