DECLENSION TABLES
Even though I’ll explain to you how to find and print out the DECLENSION TABLES of a language (because everyone is different and maybe you need to have these kind of tables around just in case), I encourage you not to use them.
I myself prefer not to use them at all because I want the learning process to be as natural as possible – I want to learn all the “rules” of language naturally from videos/ podcasts and newspaper articles. It might be a big leap for you compared to the school system but I know from my own experience that grammar comes more quickly when it’s learned only inside the context, the natural way. It means that you will let the context create the meaning.
Read the next part where I describe how to understand declension and how to find (if necessary) the declension tables of a language. And then decide whether you need them or not.
Let’s presume that you don’t know what declension or noun case are:
Declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number (at least singular and plural), case (nominative, genitive, dative, etc.), and gender.
In English there is no declension, instead the language uses additional words to give additional meaning.
In Estonian (my native language) grammatical case plays a big part in the language. So let’s see an example with the word “car” (“auto” in Estonian). “Into the car” in Estonian is “autosse”, it uses a different ending of the word to give the meaning that someone or something is going “into the car”. Thus:
(a/the) car – into a/the car
auto – autosse
You can see that in Estonian there is still only one word (no words are added), but the ending of the word is different – that’s declension.
With French it’s the same as with English – there is no significant declension. “Into the car” is “dans la voiture”. So, “dans” means “in(to)” and “la voiture” means “the car”. I hope that’s clear.
In some languages declension plays a big part, in others it doesn’t. The ones that don’t have declension are easier to learn. For example, in Finnish there are 15 noun cases which make this language a difficult one to learn.
In Estonian there are 14 noun cases and that’s the reason why many foreigners never learn the language properly. But there are many languages that don’t have declension, instead they use prepositions (i.e. additional words): French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, amongst many others.
How can you be certain that your language doesn’t have declensions and cases? It’s really simple. Just check the Wikipedia page of the language that you are learning – if there is no “declension” or “noun cases” mentioned then you’re good to go. There are also many great forums out there where people discuss this kind of questions all the time.
If you would like to find the declension tables in your language, then just Google “Declensions in Finnish” or “Noun cases in Icelandic” and you will have many useful links that will give you the answers that you are looking for.
But again, keep in mind that focusing on additional grammar – outside of verbs ‒ without context is highly inefficient and therefore we advise you to focus solely on expressing and imitating the language via articles, podcasts and videos. This is a much more efficient way to acquire something like noun declinations, because you will do it in a natural way.
But if you are more of a traditional learner and you feel that you would need this kind of information as well right from the beginning, then print out the different noun cases of the language with examples, so that you could keep those declension tables on hand (or slightly further away) during the learning process.
We have now covered everything related to texts and grammar, so that you would be ready to start using interest- related texts efficiently in your everyday learning. Let´s now summarise the key points of the chapter!