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Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.

Eddycgn:
I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

Except, Chinese, Italian and Spanish still have a pseudo-genitive construction. The only difference is that instead of using noun cases, particles/propositions/postpositions are used. Superfluous however would be possessing two difference genitive constructions like in English (of, 's etc) (which is how I understood what you said).

So one could tentatively say Chinese still hasn't dropped the genitive if European cases are used to describe Chinese grammar (after all, if one wrote 中国人的 (zhōng guó rén de - Chinaman's/of the chinese person) as "zhōngguórénde", "de" would appear to be the exact same as a European Genitive case).

Speaking of superfluous, "That book of mine" is a great example

astroly:Mi iris al TIES domo
I went to that one´s house

For simplicities sake, could one also say "Mi iris al la domo de tiu"?

(I was also gonna ask about "Mi iris al la domo de ili" but that makes me wonder if "de (pronoun)" is allowed... Mmmm)

astroly:

It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.

Possessive form of the demonstrative pronoun.

Tiu ----- ties = that one´s
Tiu ĉi -- ĉi ties = this one´s

Mi iris al TIES domo
I went to that one´s house

ĈI TIES filoj estas junaj
This person´s sons are young.

What I said was:

mi mem:It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.

I was talking about nouns, not pronouns.

[Edited into English, having mistakenly been written in Eo in the Eng forum!]

Rogir:

Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.

With all respect for your broad knowledge, I do not agree here. I have a book about languages in general, which describes in depth the evolution of languages through the ages mostly in one direction, from synthetic (agglutinierend) to analytic. I would not know a language that made the inverse process, e.g. that started without cases and ended with. Dutch, english (the english saxon genitive is a sort of relict), italian, spanish are good examples. Fresh languages are finnish, hungarian, turkish. On some african languages it is not clear how old they are. Certainly chinese is one of the oldest, and it is one of the most analytical one, no plural, no feminine, no tenses inherent in the words themselves.To discuss this through would take too much space, but it is certainly a fascinating subject!

ceigered:

Eddycgn:
I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

Except, Chinese, Italian and Spanish still have a pseudo-genitive construction. The only difference is that instead of using noun cases, particles/propositions/postpositions are used. Superfluous however would be possessing two difference genitive constructions like in English (of, 's etc) (which is how I understood what you said).

So one could tentatively say Chinese still hasn't dropped the genitive if European cases are used to describe Chinese grammar (after all, if one wrote 中国人的 (zhōng guó rén de - Chinaman's/of the chinese person) as "zhōngguórénde", "de" would appear to be the exact same as a European Genitive case).

Speaking of superfluous, "That book of mine" is a great example

You are perfecly right, but I was misunderstood, my fault probably. When I said genitive I meant the case form inherent in the word, like in german, russian, finnish, etc.
Through the time this is often fallen apart into preposition+word like in spanish de + word, or in japanese word + "no". This type of genitive is not superfluous, of course.

I misspelled the thread title terribly...
Anyway, thank you guy for being so helpful. Sometimes, I just can't find what I'm looking for and get impatient. Dankon!

Eddycgn:

Rogir:

Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.

With all respect for your broad knowledge, I do not agree here. I have a book about languages in general, which describes in depth the evolution of languages through the ages mostly in one direction, from synthetic (agglutinierend) to analytic. I would not know a language that made the inverse process, e.g. that started without cases and ended with. Dutch, english (the english saxon genitive is a sort of relict), italian, spanish are good examples. Fresh languages are finnish, hungarian, turkish. On some african languages it is not clear how old they are. Certainly chinese is one of the oldest, and it is one of the most analytical one, no plural, no feminine, no tenses inherent in the words themselves.To discuss this through would take too much space, but it is certainly a fascinating subject!

And what would be the name of that book? Because it contradicts most of what I've learned in linguistics. Besides, how do you determine the 'age' of a language? When did the vulgar Latin in Gaul become French? When did proto-Germanic in the low countries become Dutch?

Eddycgn:

Roberto12:You can use de, e.g. "it's that woman's" = gxi estas de tiu virino.

And sometimes you might need a pronoun, e.g. "I like that woman's (things)" = mi sxatas ilin de tiu virino.

It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.

I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.

See Romanian, which kept its cases because it wasn't influenced by the other Romance languages