Why does German still preserve the old case system of the Germanic languages?
This is a question directed to specialists in Germanic studies. Every other modern Germanic language, both West Germanic (Dutch and English) and North Germanic (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish), has lost the nominative, dative, and accusative distinctions in its noun systems (but not in the pronoun systems). The genitive is still preserved however. The exceptions are (1) modern German ('West Germanic) and (2) Icelandic (North Germanic).
Well, first of all, many dialects of Norwegian use dative fairly productively, not just in some set phrases.
Historical linguists generally cannot ask why or why not. Language changes are usually related to other (earlier) changes.
I am quite sure that North Germanic languages (on the continent-- not Icelandic), moved stress to the first syllable, generally, and consequently the final syllables (where the different vowels signaled cases) gradually lost their morphological distinctions.
Icelandic maintains various syllable structures.
In Norwegian, the shift of stress forward had a variety of impacts on the syllable structures; some dialects have something called "vowel balance" others use a process like Turkish -- vowel harmony.
I can recommend a book for Nordic languages (in English) if you are interested in reading more. My answer should serve as a very quick introduction, however. I have my Ph.D. in Germanic Philology and have studied myriad Germanic languages, like OHG, MHG, Old Norse, Old / Middle English.....
janus005 at umn dot edu
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