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In Estonian nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases

(swoons from rapture)

'illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative' ought to be a Tom Lehrer song. It scans if you pronounce the words as if they were Japanese.

For no good reason I am remembering my father's party trick of reciting the Writ of vi et armis from memory at the dinner table.

Rex vicecomiti salutem. Si A fecerit te securum de clamore suo prosequendo tunc pone per vadium et salvos plegios X quod sit coram justiciariis nostris tali die ostensurus quare vi et armis in ipsum A apud Trumpingtone insultum fecit et ipsum verberavit vulneravit et male tractavit, ita quod de vita ejus desperabatur, et alia enormia ei intulit ad grave damnum ipsius A et contra pacem nostram. Et habeas ibi nomina plegiorum et hoc breve.

The king to the sheriff, greeting. If A. give you security that he will prosecute his claim, then put B. by gage and safe pledges to appear before our justices on such and such a day, to show cause why, at Trumpington, he assaulted the aforementioned A, beat him, wounded him, and handled him so grievously that his very life was despaired of, and committed other atrocities upon him to the grave hurt of the aforementioned A and contrary to our peace. And bring with you the names of the pledges and this writ.

Mind, that webpage is misleading. The entry on Japanese grammar is very short and says "The good news is that Japanese has none of the following: gender, declensions or plurals. Nouns never conjugate and almost all verbs are regular." The bad news is that there can be two, three or four different verbs or verb forms for the same activity, depending on who you're talking to, and you have to grow up there to know which one to use.

ETA Which then segues into Complaints Choirs on Youtube.

The Helsinki Complaints Choir
--the grand-daddy
The Tokyo Complaints choir
--long intro but worth it. 'My grandmother thinks she's American'
The Birmingham Complaints Choir
--shall I confess that when I saw the singers arrive I assumed that was Birmingham Alabama? Not used to modern British diversity, me.
The Singapore Complaints Choir
--'what's not expressly permitted is prohibited'
The Chicago Complaints Choir
--music almost as good as the Finns'

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>> you have to grow up there to know which one to use" <<

Well, all right then: guess I shouldn't bother looking at the Japanese certificate program here for next autumn ... .

(Don't you love oversimplification coupled with exotification?)

Don't mind me, I was just being bitter. The other good news about Japanese is that if you don't look like someone who could have grown up there they don't mind if you use the wrong level of verb. Well, much. Ignore that little flinch when you kuru someone you should have irassharu'd, like an EFL speaker mispronouncing FAX as fux.

And don't mind me, either - I was teasing. I don't expect to ever be completely fluent, anyway, but I'm getting interested enough to want to spend some more serious effort on it: more than just messing about with Japanese in Mangaland and the kanji guide we have.

I think it definitely repays serious effort. The grammar *is* simple enough, once you get over the oddness (to us) of agglutinatives (you mean 'I was made to wash' is all one word??) The reading part, natch, is classified as one of the hardest in the world but doesn't look that way when you take it slow. As for speaking, you can confine yourself happily to basic conversation patterns and sound perfectly respectable, because the Japanese do too. Unlike some people (my ancestors the French, coff coff) they're very nice to those whose grasp of the language is imperfect or even barely there.

If you miss off the "comitative" you can even sing that bit to the tune of "Modern Major General".

There's illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive,
And ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive...

That's cool. And comitative can stay with Rex vicecomitative salutem.

(I'm now flashing back to my mother teaching me the rhyme to remember Latin time uses, and being shocked that I wasn't clear on them. I remember we were in the top of a bus at the time, heading into town. Years and years ago.)

No preposition use with this,
The case alone shows what it is.
Accusative shows how long things last,
i.e. for ten days we shall fast,
Ablative shows exactly when
As on that day at half past ten,
Ablative also shows the space
Within which something will take place.
So, in ten days away I go:
diebus decem abibo.

Enviable childhood. *My* mother never taught me Latin grammar on a bus.