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A lot of European languages, especially Finnish (not an INDO European language) have cases. English for the most part doesn’t. Other languages don’t. I have seen maps of grammar features around the world. Is there one for grammatical case? And, are cases (like other features in European languages including English) rare outside Europe?

Number File
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First, English does have case (He saw him, I saw them, They saw me...). Second, here is a map. "Rareness" is not a geographical property, it is a genetic property – it is rare in Niger-Congo and Austronesian, which are originally languages spoken outside of Europe. It is common in Uralic which is spread across Europe and Asia.

user6726
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  • 100% true. I forgot about that. – Number File Feb 01 '20 at 17:12
  • Though it is vestigial in English, as it is in most Romance languages, and some others. – Colin Fine Feb 02 '20 at 12:12
  • I think it's perfectly coherent to talk about rareness as a geographical property though, considering the importance of language contact. In fact it's probably more relevant to talk about rareness in the Sinosphere vs Indosphere instead of rareness within Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic, etc. – WavesWashSands Feb 08 '20 at 08:23