[winnit]

It's interesting because I've heard that one of the benefits Sanskrit poets had in their ability to introduce complex structural patterns in their poetry, is that the meaning of sentences is largely independent of their word-order - meaning the lines can be reordered to freely introduce rhyming schemes etc. Yet the language has many grammatical elements; gendered word endings and so on.

[vkazanov]

This kind of relaxed word order is also typical for modern Baltic and Slavic languages. Words themselves have enough information encoded in word prefixes/suffixes/endings so that it's possible to decode even a randomly mixed up sentence. It will feel awkward, or stylistically wrong, but nevertheless understandable.

This might help with poetry but comes at a price: it is superhard to internalise all the numerous word forms. I can't image learning Polish, Lithuanian or Russian being only exposed to English previously!

[kazinator]

> It will feel awkward, or stylistically wrong.

No it won't, because it's understood to be poetic.

In English, it's a awkward if an adjective is put after a noun right? But you don't bat an eyelash if it's in a poem.

"High upon the chimney stack, there I saw perched three crows black."

(Don't search for that, I just made it up.)

Moreover, in languages with case, reordering doesn't cause any ambiguities or confusion. You know which word is the subject and which the object in any permutation. (Not necessarily for all words, but most.) The speakers already enjoy considerable reordering freedom in everyday sentences already (non-poetic) where it plays roles in emphasis and such.

[winnit]

I actually disagree with your example. Taken ultra-literally, it could mean that 'I' was 'perched' and 'saw three black crows'. So I feel that 'crows black' was fine and French places adjectives after the word as standard. I have to rely on context to interpret the sentence, and that creates an iota of doubt which makes it read clumsily, or me read it clumsily. I think it's very nuanced and personal.

[dragandj]

It is not superhard. It’s not even hard. Every native speaker learned it easily ;)

[Finnucane]

Languages that use complex systems of conjugation and declension don't need to rely on word order as much to denote relationships between the words. In normal speaking, subject-verb-object order might still be used, but in writing, there's a lot of flexibility.

[biorach]

what your saying is true of most highly-inflected languages