Comparison of Nouns in several languages
Romance languages can be classified into 4 groups: 1) Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan; 2) French and Provencal; 3) Italian; 4) Rumanian. All of them have two genders (M & F) and they don't retain (except Romanian) intricate case system of Classical Latin.[1]
Only Sanskrit has 8 cases (except Finnish has 15 cases) and usually has less cases. Besides, the trend is minimizing them. For example, the Dative is dying out in Modern Greek.
List
| | Gender: declensions | Number | Case |
| Sanskrit | MFN: | 3:SP, dual | 8:NVAGDAblLInst |
| Koine Greek | MFN: 3 (F+MN+MNF) | 2:SP, (dual)lost | 5:NVAGD |
| Latin | MFN: 5 (F+MN+MNF+ MNF+F [2]) | 2:SP | 7:NVAGD AblL[3] |
| Italian | MF [4] | 2:SP | 4:NAD Prep |
| French | MF [5] | 2:SP | - |
| Spanish | MF [6] | 2:SP[7] | - |
| Portuguese | MF | 2:SP | - [8] |
| Swedish [9] | MF | 2:SP | 2:NG |
| Romanian[10] | MFN | 2:SP | 5:NVAGD |
| English | (MFN): 0 (no special form) | 2:SP | 2:NG |
| German | MFN: 3/4(MN+M+F) | 2:SP | 4:NAGD |
| Hebrew | MF: | 3:SP (Dual)[11] | - lost |
| Russian | MFN: 3 (MN+F+FN) | 2:SP[12] | |
| Finnish | | | 15 [13] |
| Japanese | - | - [14] | - |
| Korean | - | - | - |
| Chinese | - | - | - |
[1] Robert Lord, Comparative Linguistics, p.31.
[2] In Latin Fifth Declension, all nouns are feminine, except diēs (day) and its compound merīdiēs (midday), which are masculine.
[3] Locative case is a rare case in Latin. The locative case (Latin CASVS LOCATIVVS), which is used to express the place in or on which, or the time at which, an action is performed. The locative case is extremely marginal in Latin, applying only to the names of cities and small islands and to a few other isolated words, and is identical to the genitive case (in the first and second declension singular), the dative case (in the first and second declension plural and in the third declension) or the ablative case (fourth and fifth declension). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
[4] Nouns in Italian have gender (masculine or feminine, but no neuter), and number (singular or plural). The gender and number is always shown by the leading article (definite or indefinite), and usually by the final vowel. In most cases: Masculine singular in -o, plural in –i; Feminine singular in -a, plural in –e; but: both Masculine & Feminine singular are in -e, plural in –i. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_grammar
[5] Nouns in French are not inflected for case or person. (However, personal pronouns are.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar
[6] While Spanish is generally regarded to have two genders, its ancestor, Latin, had three. The transition from three genders to two is mostly complete, however, vestiges of a neuter gender can still be seen. This was noted by Andrés Bello in his work on the grammar of Latin American Spanish.
[7] There are two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. The singular form is the one found in dictionaries (base form). The plural is indicated in most words by adding -s (if the base form ends in a vowel) or -es otherwise. Note that final y in words like rey, though phonetically a vowel, counts as a consonant (rey → reyes). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_nouns
[8] Like all western Romance languages, Portuguese does not inflect nouns to indicate their grammatical function, relying instead on a relatively rigid sentence structure (mostly SVO, often with omitted subject) and on the extensive use of prepositions. It has fairly regular noun inflection rules to indicate number (singular or plural), and many semi-regular ones to express biological sex or social gender, size, endearment, deprecation, etc. Nouns are classified into two grammatical genders, and adjectives, articles and demonstratives must be inflected to agree with the noun in gender and number.
There are two genders, masculine and feminine, and two numbers, singular and plural. Articles and adjectives are usually inflected to agree in gender and number with the nouns or pronouns they refer to. There are no cases; only personal pronouns are still declined. Diminutive and augmentative forms exist for nouns.
[9] Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in two genders and two cases, as well as number. The two cases are nominative and genitive. Nominative is the dictionary form while the genitive suffix is -s, identical to that of English. Swedish nouns belong to one of two genders: uter (also common gender) or neuter, which also determine the declensions of adjectives. For example, the word fisk ("fish") is an uter noun and can have the following forms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language#Grammar
[10] Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender with the noun they reference.
[11] In Hebrew, most nouns have only singular and plural forms, such as sefer/sfarim "book/books", but some have singular, plural, and dual forms, such as yom/yomaim/yamim "day/two days/[two or more] days". Some words occur so often in pairs that what used to be the dual form is now the general plural, such as ayin/eynayim "eye/eyes", used even in a sentence like, "The spider has eight eyes." Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns have only singular and plural, with the plural forms of these being used with dual nouns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number#Hebrew
[12] Not all nouns have both singular and plural forms. There are nouns which exists only in the singular. For example, collectives (dishware, weapons, clothes), human activities (politics, industry), substances (foods, cereals, fruits and vegetables: gold, oil, wool, butter, rice, meat, onion), feelings and sensations (happiness, envy.) Eugenia Nekrasova, A Basic Modern Russian Grammar (1997), p.16.
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language_noun_cases & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language_grammar#Noun_forms
[14] Japanese nouns are non-inflecting and have neither gender nor number; in addition, Japanese lacks articles. Thus, 猫 (neko) can be translated as "cat", "cats", "a cat", "the cat", "some cats" and so forth, depending on context. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar#Nouns_and_other_deictics
