5. Retell the text. On the English case system

Other than language teachers and classicists, how many people understand the case-system of language? And how much does it contribute to the good use of English? Some would claim that it is an essential part of English grammar, while others, for whom case is little more than a distant echo from their school days, would dismiss it as irrelevant.

Case defines the grammatical relationship of certain words in a sentence. For anyone who is interested, or needs to refresh their memory, look at this sentence: ‘She sent him Mary’s letter.’

‘She’ does the action and is in the nominative (or subjective) case; ‘letter’ is the object of the action and is in the accusative (or objective) case; ‘him’ is the recipient of the action and is in the dative case; ‘Mary’s’ denotes possession and is in the genitive (or possessive) case.

Old English, the language before roughly the mid 12th century, had a case-system as complex as Latin and Greek, with different forms of words depending on how they related to other words in the sentence. But nearly all that system has dropped away and no one misses it. Even what is left of case in modern English is often arguable. Because the verb ‘to be’, for example, is a verb of ‘being’, it should properly be followed by the nominative case (I, she, he, etc.). Most grammarians concede that ‘it’s me’, ‘this is him’ sound natural when we are speaking, but require the nominative case (‘it is I’, ‘this is he’) in writing. This is reasonable in formal writing but does written English always have to be so stiff-necked? There is also much argument about whether ‘as’ is followed by the accusative case (‘as me’) or the nominative case (‘as I’). This applies to the words following ‘than’, to say nothing of the notorious ‘between you and I’.

In the future development of English, case may well become increasingly irrelevant, although for the foreseeable future careful writers will continue to observe at least some of the rules. But if you spend too much time worrying about it you can end up as a suitable case for treatment.