Dear Gunnar and friends,

thanks for the information. Modern English has also dropped
grammatical gender, so nouns are only singular and plural (numbers).

Here is an interesting page on how nouns are declined in Old English:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/inflnoun.html

Note that there are only four noun cases, as a result of Germanic
influences.

(As Gunnar mentioned earlier, there is no noun declension in the
Chinese language. I have also not heard of any attempt by Buddhists to
introduce it into Chinese. So, I believe the translators must have
truly appreciate both Sanskrit and Chinese.)

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Gunnar Gällmo wrote:

> Dipa: modern English has evolved to the point the
> noun cases literally do not exist

Except genitive: John's house.

But one may also say "the house of John", using a preposition for the
same function.