so called "Old Literature"

[Aylinn]

Nie, skończyłam filologię angielską.

[hannah_arendt]

Ja można powiedzieć, że jedno i drugie. Skończyłam polonistykę i jestem na drugim roku anglistyki

[kiki1982]

Cases are not necessary, if there are prepositions that make it clear what function a noun has. English only has cases for pronouns, and the lack does not create any problem.

You are right, on a general level, there is no need for cases, but wen you start looking at languages with and without, it seems rather to be the case that those which have them are allow themselves more freedom in word order. Those that don't must put the words always in the right order. Although I don't think that applies to Asian languages.

English has many many prepositions. 'To' is not the same as 'in' and 'onto' is not the same as 'on', or 'of' as 'from'. Latin for example had in + Acc. and in + Dat. German still has it (and has many others, dubbed Wechselprapositionen because they alternate cases between the Acc. and Dative depending on whether it's a direction or place). The Slavic languages have v which can mean 'in' or 'to'. 'In' is a simple case. If you say 'Ich sitze ins Kino', that's wrong, but the fact that you are sitting will denote that you really wanted to say 'Ich sitze im Kino'. But there must be situations where it's not so clear.
In Dutch we have no cases. But, we are tied to word order. I cannot at a whim change my direct and indirect objects around, because it would cause confusion or sound strange. Similarly in English, we cannot use a thing that is supposed to be a dative. 'I gave it the man' used to be right at some point (the man being dative). Now we have to say 'I gave it to the man'. In French too (also no cases) there is a mandatory order if you have a sentence where I and DO have been substituted by personal pronouns. Otherwise the IO is marked by à.

German seems to be an exception to this, in that it has strict word order, but still has cases. They are not necessary in spoken laguage, although you are grateful that there is something like cases when you are reading something which is quite long. Otherwise it would be hard to work out who is doing what at times.

The Slavic languages on the other hand have many more possibilities to throw the word order around, depending on what is the most important. English does the expressing in another way, of course.

Both systems have their charms.

There is no equivalent of Past Perfect in modern Polish. There was once, but it's obsolete now, so in order to express that something occurred before another action in the past you need to use conjunctions such as before. In other words, time clauses are used in such situations.

If you simply want to say that an action is completed, you add a prefix, e.g: "Robiłam" - I was doing. "Zrobiłam" - I have done.

Shame. Seems unwieldy at times, although maybe the fact that it has become obsolete meant it wasn't used in the first place.
It's a peculiar thing, those perfective infinitives, but you get used to it. You start to miss them in other languages.

In German, cases has always been a problem for me. Now it`s over but it is very difficult. The same occurs with adjectives. At the very beginning it seemed to me complicated.

Since I live in Germany, I'm permanently subjected to them, so m knowledge is getting quicker. The problem is getting them out properly when talking. I'm ver good at writing, but talking is bad. Although everyone says we speak such good German (maybe compared to other people, but still). Cases and grmmar are my baby. I love that!

[hannah_arendt]

If you know grammar and vocabulary writting isn`t so complicated but I cannot start thinking in German However it is very logical, almost ideal language for philosophy for example.

We have gone to linguistic matters, so I have one question connected with stresses in English. I have been thinking whether you consider this element as important?