I talked about grammatical cases a few pages back and focused on German cases because that's what I know best.
I haven't been keeping up my study of Arabic this past month or so (I've been getting my fork lift truck licence, applying for funding for a master's and attending job interviews) but I have learnt that Arabic also has a case system.
For me, the German case system is 'normal' and Arabic is a bit of a departure from that.
Arabic has three cases - nominative, genitive and accusative.
Each case has two endings - one is definite, one is indefinite.
The nominative is the subject of the sentence, as in German. But whereas the nominative in German is the simplest form of the noun, the form you'd find in a dictionary, this is not the case in Arabic. In other words, the noun has a nominative ending. (Well, actually two endings - either definite and indefinite!)
Allah (God) --> Allahu akbar (God is great).
At-taqs (the weather) --> at-taqsu harr (the weather's hot).
The accusative is the object of the sentence.
Akaltu samakan (I ate some fish); akaltu as-samaka (I ate the fish) ... from samak (fish).
The genitive is kinda similar to the genitive in German, in that it means 'of the [noun]'.
E.g. sandal al-waladi - the boy's sandals, 'sandals of the boy' (walad = boy; sandal = sandals).
But the genitive case is also used for 'preposition + noun' (this would be where nouns take the dative in German).
The good part about the case system in Arabic is that you don't have to use it. It's usually only used in formal speech - such as newsreaders and politicians.
One particular listening test in my studies was listening to a reporter talking about King Abdullah of Jordan. She used case endings with all nouns and I just couldn't get with it - the case endings were like noise that drowned out the actual words.
Another listening section was about the weather in different Arab cities and it just clicked - the case endings on certain nouns made sense and I didn't need to mentally translate from English, I got the meaning straight from Arabic.
But like I said, informal speech doesn't use case endings.
Kayfa haal at-taqsi fi London? - what's the weather like in London? (lit. how's the situation of the weather, genitive case).
And now without the case ending ...
Kayfa haal at-taqs? - what's the weather like?
At-taqsu baarid - the weather's cold.
At-taqs baarid - the weather's cold.
Haqibat al-binti - the girl's bag.
Haqibat al-bint - the girl's bag.
Very interesting to nerds like me. XD
