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Languages with the most grammatical cases

Grammatical cases are what changes the tense of a noun/adjectives, cases are not found in any romance languages expect Romanian. Hungarian has the highest amount of cases than any language with 18 grammatical cases. The languages with the least grammatical cases is Irish with 3 grammatical cases.


December 29, 2017



Tsez of the North Caucasus has 64 cases.


Hmmm ... does increasing the number of cases reduce the number of exceptions to the rules of the language? Common joke: In English there are no rules, only exceptions. Or, every (language) rule has its exception (except for the rule about exceptions - chuckle).


The constructed language Ithkuil has 96 cases. http://www.ithkuil.net/04_case.html


That's a death basket to learn.


It’s not a language for conversation, it’s more like a work of art.

John Quijada: “For me, the greater goal is to attempt the creation of what human beings, left to their own devices, would never create naturally, but rather only by conscious effort — an idealized language whose aim is the highest possible degree of logic, efficiency, detail, and accuracy in cognitive expression via spoken human language, while minimizing the ambiguity, vagueness, illogic, redundancy, polysemy (multiple meanings) and overall arbitrariness that is seemingly ubiquitous in natural human language.“


Wow. That's cool! And also.... good grief! that would take ages to learn.


Cases are one aspect. Also consider verb forms. Hungarian has a seven person-forms for each indefinite conjugation and six for definite. Arabic has 13 - depending on the number and sex of the persons. I was trying to remember the language that distinguishes "we" = "me and you" with "we" = "me and them" - anyone remember?



I believe there are many. Guaraní is one. The grammatical concept is called clusivity. Other taught-on-Duolingo languages listed there are Vietnamese and Mandarin. I can't speak to details about those, but verb conjugation for clusivity in Guaraní is certainly mandatory, and, in fact, the one for inclusive we is a good deal more complicated.


Another language (among the many) that distinguishes in/exclusive "we" is the Papuan trade language Tok Pisin.


If you look at the languages offered on Duolingo, this is likely accurate. However a number of the languages from the Caucasus are wildly more complex. Tabasaran and Tsez have many more than Hungarian. The counts of case seem to vary according to source, but somewhere between 48 to 64 are cited for these.


That's why I love the Languages of the Caucasus... ❤️


You must hate yourself.


You're also right. ❤️


You are gonna die before you memorize all of that.


Not if I choose an easier Caucasian language like Circassian which only has 4 cases...
