more like 15-20 i think, but yeah. but they're far more regular and behave more like prepositions do in english.
the worst part of IE cases isnt that there's so many of them (there arent, the most ever is like 8-9 and that's in ancient languages i think), it's that each little case marker means a multitude of things at once. see above how it ending in -i means it's one of multiple possibilities, and each time that lone little -i is marking both case and number together.
so for the above Dative example, hungarian would have (contrived, yes, i know):
Odaadta a lovat a Brutusznak - He/She gave the horse to Brutus.
Odaadta a lovat a Brutuszoknak - He/She gave the horse to the Brutuses.
the -nak signifies the dative (more or less). the -(o)k is the plural. so a plural in dative is -oknak. it's not some third thing, it's just a concatenation of the individual suffixes marking number, case, etc.
more like 15-20 i think, but yeah. but they're far more regular and behave more like prepositions do in english.
the worst part of IE cases isnt that there's so many of them (there arent, the most ever is like 8-9 and that's in ancient languages i think), it's that each little case marker means a multitude of things at once. see above how it ending in -i means it's one of multiple possibilities, and each time that lone little -i is marking both case and number together.
so for the above Dative example, hungarian would have (contrived, yes, i know):
Odaadta a lovat a Brutusznak - He/She gave the horse to Brutus. Odaadta a lovat a Brutuszoknak - He/She gave the horse to the Brutuses.
the -nak signifies the dative (more or less). the -(o)k is the plural. so a plural in dative is -oknak. it's not some third thing, it's just a concatenation of the individual suffixes marking number, case, etc.