Saluton!

Slovenian language has accusative, but not only. In total the slovenian language has six (6) declinations. No to mention that croatian language has seven (7) declinations (also the so called vocative).

Of course declinations are difficult to learn and difficult to use but they are so "powerfull". You can say a lot of things using less words than let's say in english or italian. I speak slovenian and italian and I can tell you that in slovenian language that has declinations (accusative and 5 others) you can write the same thing but using 30% less words (and space).

The axccusative in esperanto is the only declination and also is good that exists. In esperanto you use the accusative in many different ways and is needed if you want to express with esperanto everything. Esperanto is a very simple language but also very accurate.

One example: in english you cannot express the direction, in esperanto because of the accusative you can.

"The girl jumps on the bed". Does this mean that the girls jumps from the floor to the bed or that she jumos every day from the floor to the bed. In esperanto you are sure.

g12345:"The girl jumps on the bed". Does this mean that the girls jumps from the floor to the bed or that she jumos every day from the floor to the bed. In esperanto you are sure.

English uses "onto the bed" for the second meaning, IIRC. Thanks for your post!

it is used in norvegian

and yes it seems natural to talk like that. You get a better understanding of the idea of your sentence (or wathever you're saying).

It's a bit hard to use in the beginning, but you won't notice using it after a short while.

There are, broadly speaking, three main strategies used by languages to distinguish who is doing what to whom.

a) Nominative/Accusative
b) Ergative/Absolutive
c) Stative/Active

A) Nom/Acc languages. Almost all European languages fall into this category, including the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic languages: German, French, Greek, Russian, Hungarian, Finnish, Irish, Turkish etc. etc.

The -n for accusative is found in Ancient Greek
ἄνθρωπος ánthropos (Nom)
ἄνθρωπον ánthropon (Acc).

English is also a Nom/Acc language (it marks case in regular nouns by word order, and most pronouns have accusative forms: me, him, her, us, them).

In East Asia, Japanese and Korean are Nom/Acc languages, as are Quechua, and Nisenan in the Americas.

Quechua: wasi (house Nominative), wasita (house Accusative).

Nisenan: pitcaak'am (lizard Nom), pitcaak'a (lizard Acc).

This is the most common strategy used across the world, and it is also the basis of Esperanto grammar.

B) Ergative/Absolutive. Erb/Abs languages are quite different, and have the following patterns.

Subject of an intransitive verb: Absolutive case.

Object of a transitive verb: Absolutive case.

Subject of a transitive verb: Ergative case.

Here is an example from Walmajarri (Australian)

Parri pa manyan yukarni. "The boy slept"

Parri-ngu kunyarr pinya. "The boy hit the dog"

In the first sentence, the boy "Parri" is the subject of an intransitive verb (sleep), and takes the absolutive case. In the second sentence, the boy "Parri-ngu" is in the ergative case, because it is the subject of a transitive verb. "Kunyarr" (dog) is the object of the transitive verb, so it is absolutive.

Basque:
Lagun-ak "the friend" Ergative
Lagun-a "the friend" Absolutive

Mayan languages, Algonquian languages, Basque, and some Pacific langauges are all Erg/Abs, or at least have elements of this in their grammar.

C) Stative/Active. Stat/Act languages have different cases for whether the subject of the verb is actively doing the action (active), or is merely feeling or experiencing it (stative). For example, in Mohawk:

ke-nénhskwas I steal it.
wak-ateryèn:tare I know it.

In this language, the pronouns are prefixed to the verb, but you can see that the Active prefix for "I" is "ke-" and the Stative prefix for "I" is "wak-".

Stat/Act languages are fairly common throughout the Americas, and I recall that some languages in the Caucasus mountains share this.

D) Mixed. Many languages mix bits and pieces from each of the above three strategies. For example, in some Australian languages, pronouns are Erg/Abs but regular nouns are Nom/Acc.

As for the other uses of Esperanto -n (with prepositions or used temporally), it is more difficult to find equivalencies cross-linguistically. Ancient Greek certainly uses the accusative with certain prepositions to indicate motion towards:

ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ en tê skênêi in the tent

εἰς τὴν σκηνήν eis tên skênên into the tent (with accusative -n)

For the English speaker, these other uses of the -n suffix in Esperanto just have to be memorized. But we do have an Accusative, reflected both in our word order and our pronouns.

Chris

hi!
in filipino(tagalog) we have what our teachers call agent and patient or "paksa at layon"......i guess it works the same way/or a bit differently

ANG and NG are markers for nouns

kUMain ako NG mangga. I ate the mango, verb is active

kINain ko ANG mangga. I ate the mango, verb is passive.

pinangkain ko ng mangga ang kutsara. roughly:I ate the mango using a spoon.(note that 'pinang' is actually a prefix 'pang' and an infix 'in' inside. it can get quite weird

and there are many others, as you can see, if i only spoke my native language, it would be quite difficult for me to grasp the -n ending. so you could say that english was my bridge to esperanto.quite ironic.

In my language (French), there is no accusative, but I find it useful, it allows to change the order of the words and sometimes to be more accurate.

"The girl jumps on the bed". Does this mean that the girls jumps from the floor to the bed or that she jumos every day from the floor to the bed. In esperanto you are sure.

As mnlg said, in English "onto" is used, but in French both sentences are the same (La fille saute sur le lit).
German uses accusative the same way here.
The girl jumps on the bed: Das Mädchen springt auf dem Bett (dative).
The girl jumps onto the bed: Das Mädchen springt auf das Bett (accusative).

Are there other languages that use accusative (or another case) this way?

Mutusen:Are there other languages that use accusative (or another case) this way?

Sure. Polish, and many others.
For the original question - English doesn't have separate cases (except for personal pronouns, e.g. "me" is the accusative of "I", "him" of "he", etc), but a huge number of languages have noun cases. Polish has 7 cases (not to mention genders, and various families of noun roots causing different endings in different cases in different genders), so if you think having 2 cases (nominative and accusative, with a perfectly regular -n ending for accusative) in Esperanto is hard, be glad you're not learning Polish.

Ditto for Spanish and native Spanish speakers, or at least for me.

Daniel

RiotNrrd:Even English does mark the direct object in some sentences, although mainly with personal pronouns, and mostly by changing the word instead of just tacking on a suffix.

"I", "He", "She" all denote subjects.
"Me", "Him", "Her" all denote direct objects.

"I like he" is as incorrect as "Mi ŝatas li". Same with "He likes I". In both cases (heh), the direct object is not in the correct form, even though the word order tips you off as to which is the subject and which is the direct object.

But "I am he" is correct, for the same reasons that the -n is left off nouns in Esperanto that follow "estas" (although in common usage, lots of Americans would probably say "I am him" - incorrectly, though).

The -n marker only feels unnatural for a little while because native English speakers are not accustomed to marking cases that way. Spend some time writing or speaking in Esperanto, and you will reach a point where suddenly it seems completely natural. Really, it's just a matter of practice and getting accustomed to something that isn't a large part of your (our) native language.

Just a curiosity.

In Spanish the phrase "La niña salta sobre la cama" ("The girl jumps on the bed") is ambiguous enough to allow for both meanings. To disambiguate it, as far as I know, you should rephrase it completely to "La niña sube de un salto a la cama".

In general, I find the Esperanto accusative enourmously useful. Were it not for the accusative, I don't know how I would decypher the meaning of "ne al glavo sangon soifanta ĝi la homan tiras familion".

I found it immediately understandable, though it took me a bit more (not too much either) to use it on my own.

Regards,

Daniel

mnlg:

g12345:"The girl jumps on the bed". Does this mean that the girls jumps from the floor to the bed or that she jumos every day from the floor to the bed. In esperanto you are sure.

English uses "onto the bed" for the second meaning, IIRC. Thanks for your post!

As I understand it, it would mean that the girl jumps towards the bed, giving us no information about whether her movement ends on the bed or not.

Regards,

Daniel

R2D2!:

danielcg:In Spanish the phrase "La niña salta sobre la cama" ("The girl jumps on the bed") is ambiguous enough to allow for both meanings. To disambiguate it, as far as I know, you should rephrase it completely to "La niña sube de un salto a la cama".

What about “La nıña salta hacıa la cama”?

—Ilhuıtemoc δ