This is Luke in his full nerdiness and it’s a beautiful thing! I don’t speak or even study Latin, but watching him explain these language details is like watching a peacock display his glorious plumage for the simple reason that he can. And seeing this display inspires me to keep learning. Thank you, Luke
@@polyMATHY_Luke I also enjoy your language videos and couldn't help but think of you when I ran across a video that introduces viewers to the Tlingit language and its sounds. I'm moderately literate in only one language, but somehow fascinated by languages. X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell has the video on TH-cam and appears to have created it in conjunction with UAS in Juneau. th-cam.com/video/DBgRELgs2Pw/w-d-xo.html if you're interested.
Gaelic's vocative tends to be the first case taught after the nominative, because of how much it can change a word. So much so, the Scottish name Hamish comes from the vocative form of Seumas being heard as a separate name.
So, the Englishmen just adopted the name James one more time? :))) James -> Seumas (nom.) -> Sheumais (voc.) -> Hamish Yes, Celtic languages are really interesting :)
It’s also why you get some “alternative” spellings of certain names, e.g. Mairi and Mhairi, where in reality that’s the nominative and its vocative form which would be pronounced differently.
My native language, Finnish, has 15 cases + 12 adverbial forms (which act like cases). When I first heard about the vocative case, I found it the weirdest case of them all. And I still do. Too bad Finnish lacks that case
5:23 on this, in Greece we call nominative, accusative and vocative for neuter "the three same cases" because they're always identical with one another.
My Latin teacher used to give some students Latin nicknames. One of my classmates had the surname, Wolf. The teacher used to address him as Lupus. I was tempted to correct him and tell him that it should be Lupe. However, the teacher had a fearsome reputation, so I never did. I regret that after watching this video.
Haha. Well, if he was speaking English, there isn’t a strong reason to employ Latin grammar to the words. What would he have done for the possessive “Wolf’s”?
I'd really like to see a video comparing Latin and Greek languages, and how the Ablative became a passepartout for "everything else", replacing both the Locative and the Instrumental cases.
I love little language quirks like this. It feels so weird at times to use specific forms if you happen to be talking to someone. That doesn't exist in my native tongue, or now that I think about it, in English either.
Proto-Indo-European apparently had a vocative case, and purely due to that fact, vocative cases are actually pretty common in modern and historical languages. It also sort of exists in other languages, but it's often not called a case.
Absolutely superlative. I've been confused about the Greek aspect of this ever since I saw that LLPSI prescribed "Thēseu" for "Thēseus". Thank you so much!
Ukrainian language still keeps vocative case at full extent. In general, for masculine nouns the case ending is -e or -u (nom. Ivan - voc. Ivane, nom. Marko - voc. Marku), for feminine and neutral nouns the ending is -e or -o (nom. Maria - voc. Marie, nom. Olena - voc. Oleno).
@@pablodescamisado In most Slavic languages (if not in all) foreign names change to. I presume Ukrainian is not exception. For example, if there is German named Helmut, in ex-Yu (BCMS or Sr-Hr) it's in vocative "Helmute". Interesting, by us the names ending with "o" don't change (same as nominative), Marko is still Marko. Marku is dative. Of course, it's different language, different rule - but same principle. Principle is to threat it as it was native name - find something with same or similar ending and apply same rule.
@@sabkobds in Ukrainian dative case for Marko is Markóvi. And yes, foreign names are subject to change too: nom. John - voc. Johne. But not all of them: nom. Mary - voc. Mary. Uhm... it seems difficult! :)
@@igorvoloshin3406 This with Mary will stay same as nominative by us. Actually all female names that are not ending with "a" stay same. For example, Iris stays Iris in vocative. This is probably because there are not many and all have probably foreign origin. Generally such female names (without "a" at the end) have some weird other cases too, and by some a lot of cases are same as nominative. If that was male name it will recieve "e" at the end (Boris - Borise - same ending as Iris, but different vocative). If it was Mara (from Marija - that's how we say and write Maria - "j" is like "y") vocative would be Maro. Interesting, Markovi would be masculine plural adjective by us (those who belong to Marko - Marko's - but masc. pl.).
@@sabkobds words variability is mysterious thing since ancient times :) just reminded me: "Romanus sed Capuensis" Ukrainian masculine plural adjective for Marko is Márkovi, just a stress differs from singular dative :)
Wow, this was a lot more detail than what they taught us in Latin class... Now I'd love a video on the same topic in Greek, where they didn't teach us the endings at all... (well, you did go over some examples here already, but...) Also, that anecdote at the end of the two grammarians discussing was just great. Maybe I can contribute something as well... In Slovak, the vocative isn't really recognized as a separate case. It only affects masculine nouns in archaic phrases, and is generally omitted in grammar classes. However, there is a new vocative on the rise, mainly used with names, which ends in -i. It seems to be fairly new and isn't officially recognized, but quite literally everyone knows it, and it is used in exactly the same way as a real vocative would be (except that it doesn't apply to all words... yet). There are a few theories as for where it came from: from Czech, which actually has a "real" vocative in -i, from Russian, which is going through a similar change, or from Hungarian, where -i is a diminutive suffix. Of something like that. I didn't look too much into it. Native speakers who had Slovak education growing up seem to always deny its existence, despite them knowing and using it as well.... (Another thing that doesn't get taught like this is that Slovak actually has four genders: masculine is split into animate and inanimate. These mostly differ in whether the accusative is the same as the genitive or the nominative respectively (which is also seen in masculine adjectives and pronouns) and they also have a different dative and locative in the case of nouns. But Slovak education insists that there are three genders and that these are just exceptions.)
Once the vocative gets into the folds of your mind, it’s quite hard to remove. Both Hawaiian and Gaelic use it, even marking it with a similar prefixed vowel (e and a, respectively). Hawaiian: ke kumu - the teacher:: “e ke kumu, pehea ‘oe?” - “Teacher, how are you?” Gaelic (and Irish, for that matter) undergoes initial consonant lenition as well: Màiri is a woman’s name, thus: “Hàlo, a Mhàiri!” - “Hello, Mary!” With all this gorgeous morphology in Russian, I often feel the lack of a vocative case there!
La cosa ironica è il fatto che in centro-sud Italia abbiamo una forma di vocativo (che senza ombra di dubbio si è sviluppato indipendentemente dal vocativo latino). Esso consiste nell'elidere la parte del nome proprio che si trova dopo la vocale tonica. Ad esempio: Francesco>>Francè Marco>>Mà Giorgio>>Giò Giuseppe>>Giusè Ovviamente, essendo una sorta di vocativo, viene usato semplicemente quando si sta parlando con la persona interessata: non diremmo mai "ieri ho parlato con Francè".
Isso está mais parecendo um hipocorístico que um vocativo, muito embora vocativo seja a função semântica do vocábulo. Em português temos o mesmo e é um hipocorístico que pode ser usado para evocar alguém que se tenha intimidade. Amor > Mo Edgar > Ed Eduardo > Edu Rafaela/ Rafael > Rafa Alexandre > Alex Flávio > Flá José > Zé Francisco > Chico Otávio > Ota
Since we're in the subject anyway: In Arabic, the vocative case is normally realised as marfū3 (nominative). But it takes naṣb status (accusative) in iḍāfāt (genitive constructs), e.g. you would call 3abdullāh by "yā 3abdallāh" or two climbers of a mountain would be called by "yā ṭāli3aini l-jibāl". [Corrected this, because I assumed the vocative to be always manṣūb, which it is only in constructs, not on its own] A really curious thing happens in Aramaic/Syriac. Whereas normally, the penultimate syllable in a word is stressed, I have heard the vocative case (due to lack of distinct case endings) is built by stressing the antepenultimate syllable. I only read one paper on this though, so don't take my word for it :D
The vocative is not accusative if the addressee is a single word, it's nominative and without tanwin, so: yā Muḥammadu "O Muhammad". So it would actually be "yā ṭāli3ān". HOWEVER... It becomes accusative when the addressee has a genitive after it, or an objective complement, or a preposition with its complement: يا بني إسرائيل O children of Israel; يا خيرًا من زيد O thou that art better than Zeid; and your example "yā ṭāli3ain" appears as though it should have a genitive after it: يا طالعَيْ الجبل O ye (two) who are ascending the hill.
Heh, Greek still kept the vocative case in the modern day! In fact, although it's often morphologically the same as the nominative, as in Latin, it is marked by the absence of the article in person names! Pretty cool
I just have to say that Romanian is the only modern latin/romance language that has almost all the cases of the Latin language (except for the Ablative I think). It's an absolutely unique language from several points of view. I'll have to make a video about this at some point... Anyway, I'm so proud to be Romanian! :)
In fact, the carrion crow and the hooded crow are the same species. They are not genetically different and can interbreed with each other. However, it has been established that they do not mate with each other, or only very rarely. Ergo, they are racists! lol In the local park we have both variants, carrion crows predominate, and they get along quite well with each other. The problem is that there were only a few couples thirty years ago, and since they are protected, almost a thousand have multiplied. They make a terrible mess, damage the trees, and make a terrible noise! : (
What I always thought was odd about the vocative case was how it exists for nouns that refer to things one is not likely to speak to. I see now that, in Latin, it just follows simple rules for such words in general, so it doesn't really have to be learned for these words, and the fact that grammarians argued about probably is a sign of how rare it is to put some words in the vocative.
This brings me back to secondary school, where in Latin class the vocative would have been largely ignored, but I happened to have a Latin teacher who also taught Greek in a different school and he used to go on an on about the vocative case. It was about the same time that I was starting to discover similarities in grammatical syncretisms between Latin and the other languages I was being taught, such as German. That started a fascination with linguisitics for me, and although I ended up getting a BA in a completely different subject, that fascination has stayed with me ever since. The vocative case in Latin is sometimes considered somewhat peculiar, and I have read that some grammarians do not even consider it a real grammatical case, because otherwise it would apply to nouns in all declensions, not just second declension nouns that end in us and are masculine or feminine. I disagree of course, because something similar would then apply to the locative case, which -is- recognized by them as a grammatical case. Hmm, the locative... In languages where the case system has largely fallen apart, such as many of the Romance languages or Germanic languages such as English or Dutch, there is usually no separate form for a vocative case either. I did however, observe a pecularity in day to day Dutch. When an adult addresses their mother, ("moeder" in Dutch), I have observed that people often add an -s to the final syllable of the word. So "moeder" becomes "moeders". I am not certain if this would count as a separate vocative form, as I do not know if this is simply limited to the people in my group of peers, or if this is something that is used in a wider group of speakers. As far as I know, it is limited to this single word. It certainly does not work this way when speaking to one's father, whom in Dutch one would simply address with "father", or rather "pa" in daily speech. Now that I think of it, if I were a proper grammarian, and not simply an amateur linguist ;-), I would argue that the vocative case and the vocative form of a word are two separate things. Grammar and morphology sometimes simply do not line up. Consider the highly irregular declension of the fourth declension (proper) noun Iesus, which does have a separate vocative form, Iesu. That is, until you realize it was borrowed from Greek, where it was a second declension proper noun, in turn borrowed from a Semitic language, probably Hebrew or Arabic.
The problem only really arises when one tries to classify a language purely on the basis of syntax, fully voiding it of usage. I feel you might have either enjoyed linguistics as a field of study, or perhaps hated it for not being as "grammarian" as you expect. The truth is (and that is evident in the fact that even grammarians in antiquity argued over forms as explained in the video) that the vocative forms of words are highly dependent on pragmatic situation and not really on speech content, i.e. semantics, and have one simple rule (for truly Latin words): if it ends in -us, isn't neuter and not part of the u-declension (or happens to end in -us in the nominative for other reasons), make -e out of -us (except for deus). The rest is sound elision and lenghtening, which can be found in all languages. Whether we call something a case will depend on its distinctiveness in usage and whether separate forms exist for that usage case. It is true that the classification of the ablative in Latin hinges very much on distinctions from the dative in only few declensions (true locative forms only exist for some words and could be considered genitive), but even if you wanted to classify the dative as a case that has some separate forms for certain uses in some declensions, it would still bear the hallmarks of a case, reigned by prepositions or certain semantic relations to other words in the sentence. The vocative both lacks these features AND is only distinguishable from nominative in one declension. From a didactic perspective at least, it makes total sense not to call it a case, as this tends to mean you have to give another row to all those declension tables for something that can be summarized with the rule above and is only used in a pragmatic, dialogical situation (i.e. rarely in the original texts students mostly read).
@@damouze That's great. I never claimed you hated linguistics. I can't judge your efforts or knowledge from one comment, but it at least somewhat points to the type of person that would fall more into the language (learning)-lover/polyglot category than the linguist category. Nothing bad about this, of course, but many people from this category find actual linguistics frustrating when they do have to study it. (I used to teach these people, so have some experience). For instance, the high-school type of approach, "grammar", would already be too simplistic for a linguistic discussion.
@@theopuscula Ah, ok. No worries. Ah, I see. I do not consider myself anything more than an amateur. I call myself an 'amateur linguist' simply because, other than maybe in secondary school, I never had any formal training in it and because the term 'linguist' feels more broad than 'grammarian'. I am interested in more than just the grammar of a language, or the phonology or morphology. I am interested in all of them and how each of these evolved over time. I remember when I first read about the various sound changes that happened in the Indo-European languages, say for instance the second German sound shift. At first you take these 'rules' at face value, but once you apply them or see them applied enough you start to 'hear them in your head' so to speak, and they start to make sense and you begin to see the patterns. And then you start to form theories. They don't always pan out, but you always learn from them. Would I find the actual study boring were I doing it in an academic setting? I honestly do not know. I do not find it boring so far doing it as a hobby. But maybe that's just it: there's no pressure ;-). Non scholae, sed vitae discimus.
A Welsh character in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives Of Windsor" refers to the "focative" case. It is perhaps the only time Shakespeare hints at a certain expletive in the English language.
WInston Churchill, recalling his schooldays: "But," I repeated," what does it mean?" "Mensa means a table," he answered. "Then why does mensa also mean O table," I enquired, "and what does O table mean?" "Mensa, O table, is the vocative case," he replied. "But why O table?" I persisted in genuine curiosity. "O table - you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table." And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, "You would use it in speaking to a table." "But I never do," I blurted out in honest amazement. "If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely," was his conclusive rejoinder. Such was my first introduction to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.
I guess English *kinda* has a vocative, if you count the particle *O*, like in, "Hear me, O Lord," or, "O happy dagger, this is thy sheath," or some similar situation. But it's incredibly specific. (Edited for accuracy) Tamil has a vocative case formed with an -ē added to the end of the word. Although Tamil’s case system is so regular that the cases used on the normal nouns are also used on pronouns (why doesn’t every language with cases do this?), pronouns cannot be put into the vocative. As an example of the vocative, the noun ஆண் (man [adult male human]) in the vocative becomes ஆணே. Romanized, that’s ān to ānē. If it were plural, then the plural suffix -கள் (-kal) would be applied, then the vocative suffix, which is the same for singular and plural. The vocative plural of ஆண் is அண்களே (ānkalē)
I have a feeling that the popularity using the O in “O Lord” is due to the fact that the King James Bible etc were translating from Latin and Greek, which do have the vocative, into English, which doesn’t. So in trying to make that vocative very clear, they probably grammaticalised the use of “O Lord” to mean Lord in the vocative. I’m sure people were using O like this in English before, but it’s possibly that analogy to Latin and Greek made this more solidified
An interesting observation in general regarding this point is that English does not only have the vocative case, but also the dative, instrumental and other cases. The only difference to Latin, Russian or PIE among other highly inflected languages is that English communicates these ideas not by case endings, but by prepositions and the likes of them. On that note, I would like to know if one could call the japanese and korean particle-system a form of inflection as well. Technically they come at the end of a noun and communicate different cases, which is not different to grammatical paradigms, right?
@@taha_bin_mehdi it’s about conveying the idea. Some languages do it by cases, other by the use of prepositions. The use of cases is not the idea a way of expressing it. So not really, English doesn’t have a case system. It only has very limited remnants of it subject and object form for pronouns: I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, they/them. Historically, Middle English used to have cases.
It's always funny to me when someone explains how noun declension in some language works like, while I have it in my native language and it's like the most obvious thing in the world 😅
Try learning a language that has a case yours doesn't. I still don't understand what question ablative is supposed to answer, when genitive would naturally suffice. Or the dozen different locatives of Finnish. That one's an absolute brainwringer.
@@povilzem Yes, it always can get harder. It could be also confusing when a language uses different cases often in completely different role, like German.
Amazing content as always, Luke. I only recently discovered your channel and really enjoy your analysis of Latin in both real and fictional settings. I would love to see you tackle High Gothic from Warhammer 40,000, which is a mixture of both real Latin and a pseudo-Latin used by the human empire of that universe, the Imperium of Man. It's primarily inspired by Ecclesiastical Latin since the Imperial religion is heavily based on the Catholic Church.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, this is a really useful skill! The video turned out to be more spectacular, dynamic and funny! I wanted to suggest an idea for a video if what I'm going to ask is really worth considering. I'm wondering if there is any particular story as to why the final consonant of the stem in the third declension nouns often changes in the nominative case? Is it a natural course of things, or does it happen "just because, nobody knows"? Does the fact that later Romance languages inherited the noun stem, and not the nominative case, mean that people instinctively continued to understand that, for example, the stem of words like pāx or gēns is pāc- and gent-? It is very curious to observe this when you trace the etymology of words, for example, in Spanish or Italian. The first question that arises in your head when you find out that, for example, the word "ciudad" comes from the accusative "cīvitātem", and not the nominative "cīvitās", which would be more logical from the point of view of a modern person. I have heard such an explanation that it was easier for people in the era of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, speaking forms of popular Latin, when the final consonant of the stem did not disappear, so it was preserved. But could it be that simple? I hope the question is clear and I'm not looking for meaning where there is none :) And a general question to you personally: Do you agree with the idea that the stems from which words originate in a particular group of languages (for example, Indo-European, Semitic, Turkic) were originally just a random set of sounds that later began to take on meanings, and theoretically words in modern languages could look different, but have a similar appearance and decline according to similar principles?
ó, vokative! 😋 as a native speaker of a lang with vocative, i like it and am used to it. if czeching ;-) our declensions, only substantīva with -e, -o, -í (practically all neutra) have N = V (= A). and as those two grammarians we have our own disputationes about proper forms, e. g. my name "jan" is often in V "jene", but i use "jane" cos of the [a] which makes the ending more [ɛ], otherwise people tend to say [jene]. and the masculine nouns ending in -dce are often popularly vocativised to -dče rather than to "correct" -dce.
Virus is second declension? Looking it up I see my dictionaries agree with you. So I wonder why I thought it was fourth declension. About 20 years ago I tried to tell a cousin that the Latin plural would be virus, not viri -- but it looks like I was wrong. :(
We have a vocative case for many nouns in Australian English. You take the first syllable of the first name and add -o to the end. E.g. Robert->Robbo, John->Johnno, Tom->Tommo, Steven->Stevo. Like Latin there are exceptions e.g. Barry->Bazza.🙂
Could the vocative case also be a mark of affection or familiarity with the person you're talking to? Like the use of "a" or "ah" + name in some Malay dialects. And Luke is an expert at walking backwards in Rome!
you can use the vocative case with a first person verb to get a "I, name, do solemnly swear" type of construction in Latin too. So in Seneca's Agamemnon: "fugio Thyestes inferos, superos fugo", "I, Thyestes, flee the hells, the heavens I bring to flight" also, no homo, "I, a man, swim"
The vocative case is used more in formal Polish, but even here it feels somewhat archaic, more so as time goes by. It has vanished, I think, in Russian. I remember, when learning Latin, we had to memorize the declensions, always in the N, G, D, Acc, Abl, V order, including the Vocative at the end, yes, even though it was always the same as the Nominative, but for the 2nd declension "-us" case as you point out. Still, there was a certain rhythm to it that helped us memorize the stuff, and that Eddie Izzard makes fun of in one of his stand-up comedy jokes (also Monty Python in Life of Brian).
I must correct myself, sort of. The Polish Dictionary of Correct Polish instructs to decline “mezczyzna” as a feminine noun throughout. However, the fact remains that in colloquial usage, the nominative often replaces the vocative as in “babcia” rather than “babciu” (“grandma!”).
Oh God, Luke, I was dying to ask you where the long vowels are in the phrase "Ave, imperator..." do you have a video on how popular latin phrases are pronounced or would you care to make one? On the subject, south slavic languages are also very similar in building the vocative, sometimes it is same as nominative, especially with names, other times it would be very clumsy to use nominative. Say, nominative for word wolf is "vuk" but vocative is "Zdravo, vuče" (Hello, wolf), mostly for nouns ending in a consonant...however one could mostly use nominative for vocative in a pejorative or teasing meaning.
So I have been wondering if a Roman from the city itself, who lived around 100 BC would have magically been transported into the Rome of 250 A.D. Would that Roman even recognize its own city, would he still understand the language, the way people dressed, the food and all the other manners of 250 AD Rome?
Romanian has the vocative case, but its usage varies along sociolinguistic lines. In the cities and among the educated classes it's not much of a thing anymore. I was in the Czech Republic at the university for a semester and I heard my advisor there address his colleague using the vocative case, and it threw me for a loop. Her name ends in -a, and he used -o, just like it would be in Romanian, but this social context was all wrong, and I was like wtf just happened?
What was the vocative singular of the second declension masculine noun deus? I remember my high school teacher saying it was the same as the nominative case, in order avoid the rather bizarre form dee. Would you agree? In liturgical Latin I've certainly only ever used deus.
interesting! We still retain the vocative in Welsh, but, we don't have declensions in Welsh any more, they were lost when Brythonic became Welsh after the Roman occupation. It seems the 300+ years of interaction between the Brythonic language (the indigenous Celtic language what is now the whole of the territory south of Edinburgh including what is now England) 'upset' the grammar of Brythonic, where by we lost the neuter case, the genative, cases and developed mutations. In Welsh we do use the vocative usually for people, so "plant" (children) => blant! (as in, hey children, play time is over!); bechgyn => fechgyn (boys!); merched => ferched! (girls!); cyfaill = gyfaill (friend/comrade), Cymru => Gymry (Welsh people!) So we use the Welsh mutation system to run the vocative. We used to mutate personal names too (as Scots Gaelic still does) but that's rarely done today.
so interesting! Can somebody explain to me (or point out the time in the video, in case i missed it) why there is a (perceivable) vocative only in 2nd declension?
I would much more likely talk to my daughter-in-law, if I had one, than to a cypress tree. But "nurus" is fourth-declension, unlike its ancestor "*snusós", which is second-declension (fourth would be **snusús). How come? And both Spanish and Russian have moved it to the first declension.
As IE languages change we frequently see nouns switch declensions. Note how Slavic is quite standardized to consonant/vowel ending. And in Latin pīnus can be 2 or 4 decl
Hey hey, love ur channel and try to learn some Latin! One question: shouldn't it be "noli me edere, lupe" or something? Or is "esse" also a word for eating in this case? Keep up the good work!!!!
5:35 I was waiting for the one name which has a separate vocative form in English. I thought that the vocative of Iesus was Iesu. That's where we get Jesu from, isn't it? Isn't that another of these Ancient Greek vocatives borrowed into Latin?
Vocative is still in use in romanesco, central and southern italian dialects. It's just that the speakers don't know it, cause nobody does bother to study the dialects' grammar.
Still used in Polish too, although mostly in formal conversations, so e.g "I ty, Brucie?" (Lat. Et tu, Brute?) being a question asked of a friend is unlikely to happen. I suppose languages do have a tendency to get rid of vocatives by compensating with context Instead.
Similarly in Polish, certain words in the nominative look feminine, ending in “a,” as for example “meszczyzna” (“man,” ironically ). But it is declined as a masculine noun in oblique declensions. So”meszczyznie!,” not “meszczyzno!”
I feel vocative is mostly dysfunctional in Latin, as it doesn't occur in so many words (I mean it doesn't have a distinctive form, so it's not really usefur for comprehension to have one). By the way, how comes there is vocative on the second declension and not the others ? I guess one should go back to PIE to understand what's happening here. By the way, what is the vocative for words in -eus? In another comment, the name Thēseus was cited to have a vocative in -eu, but it's from Greek, so I guess it doesn't count.
The older, regular forms with long ī are found in Plautus and Terentius. The forms with short i are a result of iambic shortening, a process in which a final long vowel of two-syllable words would... shorten, hence also bĕnĕ instead of bĕnē
actually isnt a large part of 2nd decl f names of plants? do those get the treatment considering they are otherwise more regular, including in semantics ig
Yes same here in greece we study ancient greek all throughout junior high/middle school and the first year of high school and the students who want to study Humanities (such as myself ) also study ancient greek and latin the second and third year of high school and we are also examined in this subject in both our final high school exams and the university entering exams
That is not standard orthography. Latin in standard orthography uses V and U as different letters. Old Spanish used to do what the ancient Romans did: make no distinction. I prefer the modern way
I personally still think, that it is not really a semantic case, especially if it just used when one 'screams' after someone (If I have gotten it rightly by my teachers in Latin and you 😉). The semantic meaning otherwise is already in the second person of the verb. That might be the reason why it has died out (or is at the moment) in most languages, like Latvian for example, where it is still used smt. , but not always and mostly not part of paradigms. It's just told, "if you call after someone (male), leave the -s -ending away". So, to me it is more some kind of a speech change - created by a change in intonation, or, basically stress on some phonetic muscles, if you scream, or put more "force" into your speechI personally still think, that it is not really a semantic case, especially if it just used when one 'screams' after someone (If I have gotten it rightly by my teachers in Latin and you 😉). The semantic meaning otherwise is already in the second person of the verb. That might be the reason why it has died out (or is at the moment) in most languages, like Latvian for example, where it is still used smt. , but not always and mostly not part of paradigms. It's just told, "if you call after someone (male), leave the -s -ending away". So, to me it is more some kind of a speech change - created by a change in intonation, or, basically stress on some phonetic muscles, if you scream, or put more "force" into your speech, especially if we consider that the "-us" used to be an 'ous' before and might have been still spoken as some kind of deeper 'u' (maybe this was also the reason why there's been still a separate "u-Declension" beside the "o-Declension?) If you scream a name like "Lucius", the "-ius" turns easily into some kind of a Schwa-sound, which might also explain why it's "Luce" and not "Lucie"...
Another observation I've made is, the more 'flat-bottomed' the intonation if a language is , the more morphems it has [or otherway round?🤔] : Most agglutinating languages have a rather 'flat', non voiced intonation, see Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, just to name a few of even different language families. The same seem to be true for strongly flectating languages, which there aren't that many contemporary examples like Russian or Lithuanian, -but since we know that Latin had this 'highness'-accent/intonation, also there might be a pattern. Long story short, German for example has some kind of a 'non-screaming' vocative, like Czech or Ukrainian, too: But it is in the intonation. Just like it hasn't got a question-particle like '-ne?', but the meaning is on the intonation (yes, most often you change the word-order to mark a question, but you can also ask some questions without changing it, mostly when you presume a "yes"-answer and to me as a mother-speaker the intuitively 'feeling' of 'this is a question' comes mostly from the intonation. Quite the same goes for the distinction inclusive and exclusive "we", that some lang. have morphems for: You clearly raise your voice in German, wether to include the listener or not, just like there's a huge difference in just saying the name of smo. (insofar semantic 'nominative') and talking to smo. (insofar semantic 'vocative'), even if it doesn't appear written on the paper. If one now compares Russian and Ukrainian, Ukrainian is spoken more 'tongue-down' and lesser voiced so it is phonetically more likely that a voice change also creates some change of the ending, in the vocative case, so it retained it, wheras Russian didn't.
I'm just a beginner in Latin, but in "Noli me esse, lupe", I thought esse meant "to be"? I would probably have said, "Noli me comedere, lupe". To me it sounds like you're telling the wolf to "not to be me". Is this maybe a sort of colloquialism?
@@Alexander-tx4bw In fact, ēsse is the original irregular form as an athematic verb (ed-se > ēsse), and edere was remade analogically from the other tenses (the present indicative forms were affected too) as ed-e-se > edere.
Honestly, if you're trying to learn restored classical pronunciation you should watch Luke's audio recordings of the LLPSI on his second channel, Scorpio Martianus. He also has tons of pronunciation guides on both channels, just consume the content and get used to making the sounds. Luckily Latin is a very consistent language when it comes to pronunciation so if you master the vowel and consonant sounds you can do a reasonable job of pronouncing any word!
Bogdan - Bogdane! Dragoș - Dragoșe! Ana - Ano! Iulia - Iulio! Andrei - Andrei (does not have vocative, possibly merger of i and e in "Andreie" along with lack of distinctive gemination in our language) Idiot - Idiotule! (Notice it also is articulated with the definite article, since you are adressing directly a specific idiot :))) It's very much vibrant and used by everyone. In the last case it's funny, because the definite article follows the noun (Balkan sprachbund rules, likely remnants of thracian grammar) but the vocative is very much Latin. While the names are of course, quite slavic historically:))
There's something supremely wholesome about saying "Hello, tree!" with a small wave.
This is Luke in his full nerdiness and it’s a beautiful thing! I don’t speak or even study Latin, but watching him explain these language details is like watching a peacock display his glorious plumage for the simple reason that he can. And seeing this display inspires me to keep learning. Thank you, Luke
That’s very flattering. May I live up to your description
@@polyMATHY_Luke I also enjoy your language videos and couldn't help but think of you when I ran across a video that introduces viewers to the Tlingit language and its sounds. I'm moderately literate in only one language, but somehow fascinated by languages. X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell has the video on TH-cam and appears to have created it in conjunction with UAS in Juneau. th-cam.com/video/DBgRELgs2Pw/w-d-xo.html if you're interested.
Latin isn't even one of my languages, but the sheer passion for language in this video inspires me to learn grammar for my languages better.
Thanks, that’s nice of you to say
Gaelic's vocative tends to be the first case taught after the nominative, because of how much it can change a word. So much so, the Scottish name Hamish comes from the vocative form of Seumas being heard as a separate name.
Beautiful. I love Gaelic
So, the Englishmen just adopted the name James one more time? :))) James -> Seumas (nom.) -> Sheumais (voc.) -> Hamish
Yes, Celtic languages are really interesting :)
It’s also why you get some “alternative” spellings of certain names, e.g. Mairi and Mhairi, where in reality that’s the nominative and its vocative form which would be pronounced differently.
My native language, Finnish, has 15 cases + 12 adverbial forms (which act like cases).
When I first heard about the vocative case, I found it the weirdest case of them all. And I still do. Too bad Finnish lacks that case
With 15-27 cases, I totally would have expected vocative to at least be one of them, so this comes a surprise haha :P
5:23 on this, in Greece we call nominative, accusative and vocative for neuter "the three same cases" because they're always identical with one another.
Ναι μάλιστα
@@polyMATHY_Luke hai maliota?
@@nafismubashir2479 nai malista
Romanian still inherits vocative case, including "-e" for masculine/neuter singular.
My Latin teacher used to give some students Latin nicknames. One of my classmates had the surname, Wolf. The teacher used to address him as Lupus. I was tempted to correct him and tell him that it should be Lupe. However, the teacher had a fearsome reputation, so I never did. I regret that after watching this video.
Haha. Well, if he was speaking English, there isn’t a strong reason to employ Latin grammar to the words. What would he have done for the possessive “Wolf’s”?
I'd really like to see a video comparing Latin and Greek languages, and how the Ablative became a passepartout for "everything else", replacing both the Locative and the Instrumental cases.
I love little language quirks like this. It feels so weird at times to use specific forms if you happen to be talking to someone. That doesn't exist in my native tongue, or now that I think about it, in English either.
Proto-Indo-European apparently had a vocative case, and purely due to that fact, vocative cases are actually pretty common in modern and historical languages. It also sort of exists in other languages, but it's often not called a case.
You'd also like how Elamite/Hatamtite inflects all nouns for person.
Absolutely superlative. I've been confused about the Greek aspect of this ever since I saw that LLPSI prescribed "Thēseu" for "Thēseus". Thank you so much!
Ukrainian language still keeps vocative case at full extent. In general, for masculine nouns the case ending is -e or -u (nom. Ivan - voc. Ivane, nom. Marko - voc. Marku), for feminine and neutral nouns the ending is -e or -o (nom. Maria - voc. Marie, nom. Olena - voc. Oleno).
Does it work only with Ukrainian names? If I speak Ukrainian and use foreign names, do they also change in vocative?
@@pablodescamisado In most Slavic languages (if not in all) foreign names change to. I presume Ukrainian is not exception.
For example, if there is German named Helmut, in ex-Yu (BCMS or Sr-Hr) it's in vocative "Helmute".
Interesting, by us the names ending with "o" don't change (same as nominative), Marko is still Marko. Marku is dative.
Of course, it's different language, different rule - but same principle.
Principle is to threat it as it was native name - find something with same or similar ending and apply same rule.
@@sabkobds in Ukrainian dative case for Marko is Markóvi. And yes, foreign names are subject to change too: nom. John - voc. Johne. But not all of them: nom. Mary - voc. Mary. Uhm... it seems difficult! :)
@@igorvoloshin3406 This with Mary will stay same as nominative by us. Actually all female names that are not ending with "a" stay same. For example, Iris stays Iris in vocative. This is probably because there are not many and all have probably foreign origin.
Generally such female names (without "a" at the end) have some weird other cases too, and by some a lot of cases are same as nominative.
If that was male name it will recieve "e" at the end (Boris - Borise - same ending as Iris, but different vocative).
If it was Mara (from Marija - that's how we say and write Maria - "j" is like "y") vocative would be Maro.
Interesting, Markovi would be masculine plural adjective by us (those who belong to Marko - Marko's - but masc. pl.).
@@sabkobds words variability is mysterious thing since ancient times :) just reminded me: "Romanus sed Capuensis"
Ukrainian masculine plural adjective for Marko is Márkovi, just a stress differs from singular dative :)
Wow, this was a lot more detail than what they taught us in Latin class... Now I'd love a video on the same topic in Greek, where they didn't teach us the endings at all... (well, you did go over some examples here already, but...)
Also, that anecdote at the end of the two grammarians discussing was just great.
Maybe I can contribute something as well... In Slovak, the vocative isn't really recognized as a separate case. It only affects masculine nouns in archaic phrases, and is generally omitted in grammar classes. However, there is a new vocative on the rise, mainly used with names, which ends in -i. It seems to be fairly new and isn't officially recognized, but quite literally everyone knows it, and it is used in exactly the same way as a real vocative would be (except that it doesn't apply to all words... yet). There are a few theories as for where it came from: from Czech, which actually has a "real" vocative in -i, from Russian, which is going through a similar change, or from Hungarian, where -i is a diminutive suffix. Of something like that. I didn't look too much into it.
Native speakers who had Slovak education growing up seem to always deny its existence, despite them knowing and using it as well.... (Another thing that doesn't get taught like this is that Slovak actually has four genders: masculine is split into animate and inanimate. These mostly differ in whether the accusative is the same as the genitive or the nominative respectively (which is also seen in masculine adjectives and pronouns) and they also have a different dative and locative in the case of nouns. But Slovak education insists that there are three genders and that these are just exceptions.)
Thanks for the comment
I always thought of Slovak as having 3 genders with masculine having 2 subgenders. Depends on what counts as a gender.
Once the vocative gets into the folds of your mind, it’s quite hard to remove. Both Hawaiian and Gaelic use it, even marking it with a similar prefixed vowel (e and a, respectively). Hawaiian: ke kumu - the teacher:: “e ke kumu, pehea ‘oe?” - “Teacher, how are you?” Gaelic (and Irish, for that matter) undergoes initial consonant lenition as well: Màiri is a woman’s name, thus: “Hàlo, a Mhàiri!” - “Hello, Mary!”
With all this gorgeous morphology in Russian, I often feel the lack of a vocative case there!
Ukrainian has it though.
Russian is in the process of gaining a vocative. You already use it widely for words like mother.
La cosa ironica è il fatto che in centro-sud Italia abbiamo una forma di vocativo (che senza ombra di dubbio si è sviluppato indipendentemente dal vocativo latino). Esso consiste nell'elidere la parte del nome proprio che si trova dopo la vocale tonica.
Ad esempio: Francesco>>Francè
Marco>>Mà
Giorgio>>Giò
Giuseppe>>Giusè
Ovviamente, essendo una sorta di vocativo, viene usato semplicemente quando si sta parlando con la persona interessata: non diremmo mai "ieri ho parlato con Francè".
Sì! Un vocativo innovativo, molto bello
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ītaliānōs audīuī nōmina praecīdentēs, sed tantum esset uocātīuum, nescīuī.
Isso está mais parecendo um hipocorístico que um vocativo, muito embora vocativo seja a função semântica do vocábulo.
Em português temos o mesmo e é um hipocorístico que pode ser usado para evocar alguém que se tenha intimidade.
Amor > Mo
Edgar > Ed
Eduardo > Edu
Rafaela/ Rafael > Rafa
Alexandre > Alex
Flávio > Flá
José > Zé
Francisco > Chico
Otávio > Ota
@@edgarazevedo1306 Pensei a mesma coisa. Isso é mais uma forma carinhosa de chamar alguém do que propriamente um vocativo.
@@frankstrawnation its not a "forma carinhosa", we use it when we call someone.
It has a specific function.
This was always one case that I never used or practiced with but this clears things up
Since we're in the subject anyway: In Arabic, the vocative case is normally realised as marfū3 (nominative). But it takes naṣb status (accusative) in iḍāfāt (genitive constructs), e.g. you would call 3abdullāh by "yā 3abdallāh" or two climbers of a mountain would be called by "yā ṭāli3aini l-jibāl". [Corrected this, because I assumed the vocative to be always manṣūb, which it is only in constructs, not on its own]
A really curious thing happens in Aramaic/Syriac. Whereas normally, the penultimate syllable in a word is stressed, I have heard the vocative case (due to lack of distinct case endings) is built by stressing the antepenultimate syllable. I only read one paper on this though, so don't take my word for it :D
The vocative is not accusative if the addressee is a single word, it's nominative and without tanwin, so: yā Muḥammadu "O Muhammad". So it would actually be "yā ṭāli3ān". HOWEVER...
It becomes accusative when the addressee has a genitive after it, or an objective complement, or a preposition with its complement: يا بني إسرائيل O children of Israel; يا خيرًا من زيد O thou that art better than Zeid; and your example "yā ṭāli3ain" appears as though it should have a genitive after it: يا طالعَيْ الجبل O ye (two) who are ascending the hill.
@@bowiethedog6285 Thanks for the correction, I didn't know this only affects constructs 👍
Heh, Greek still kept the vocative case in the modern day! In fact, although it's often morphologically the same as the nominative, as in Latin, it is marked by the absence of the article in person names! Pretty cool
Indeed! As it is in land Slavic languages
Not only does Luke remind me of my son in handsome ways, but he can also walk backwards while keeping up a steady flow of intelligence. Egregius est!
I just have to say that Romanian is the only modern latin/romance language that has almost all the cases of the Latin language (except for the Ablative I think). It's an absolutely unique language from several points of view. I'll have to make a video about this at some point... Anyway, I'm so proud to be Romanian! :)
There's even vocativ case for feminine words (not always used) like mamico.
Just to make things confusing, that crow looked like a hooded crow to me. The scientific name for that (if not the classical one) is corvus cornix!
Nice
In fact, the carrion crow and the hooded crow are the same species. They are not genetically different and can interbreed with each other. However, it has been established that they do not mate with each other, or only very rarely. Ergo, they are racists! lol
In the local park we have both variants, carrion crows predominate, and they get along quite well with each other. The problem is that there were only a few couples thirty years ago, and since they are protected, almost a thousand have multiplied. They make a terrible mess, damage the trees, and make a terrible noise! : (
@@milfredcummings717 Too many smart-ass people on this channel. I'm outa here.
What I always thought was odd about the vocative case was how it exists for nouns that refer to things one is not likely to speak to. I see now that, in Latin, it just follows simple rules for such words in general, so it doesn't really have to be learned for these words, and the fact that grammarians argued about probably is a sign of how rare it is to put some words in the vocative.
You have succeeded in cloning yourself, at once in the Rockies, at once in Rome...incredible!
This brings me back to secondary school, where in Latin class the vocative would have been largely ignored, but I happened to have a Latin teacher who also taught Greek in a different school and he used to go on an on about the vocative case. It was about the same time that I was starting to discover similarities in grammatical syncretisms between Latin and the other languages I was being taught, such as German. That started a fascination with linguisitics for me, and although I ended up getting a BA in a completely different subject, that fascination has stayed with me ever since.
The vocative case in Latin is sometimes considered somewhat peculiar, and I have read that some grammarians do not even consider it a real grammatical case, because otherwise it would apply to nouns in all declensions, not just second declension nouns that end in us and are masculine or feminine. I disagree of course, because something similar would then apply to the locative case, which -is- recognized by them as a grammatical case. Hmm, the locative...
In languages where the case system has largely fallen apart, such as many of the Romance languages or Germanic languages such as English or Dutch, there is usually no separate form for a vocative case either. I did however, observe a pecularity in day to day Dutch. When an adult addresses their mother, ("moeder" in Dutch), I have observed that people often add an -s to the final syllable of the word. So "moeder" becomes "moeders". I am not certain if this would count as a separate vocative form, as I do not know if this is simply limited to the people in my group of peers, or if this is something that is used in a wider group of speakers. As far as I know, it is limited to this single word. It certainly does not work this way when speaking to one's father, whom in Dutch one would simply address with "father", or rather "pa" in daily speech.
Now that I think of it, if I were a proper grammarian, and not simply an amateur linguist ;-), I would argue that the vocative case and the vocative form of a word are two separate things. Grammar and morphology sometimes simply do not line up. Consider the highly irregular declension of the fourth declension (proper) noun Iesus, which does have a separate vocative form, Iesu. That is, until you realize it was borrowed from Greek, where it was a second declension proper noun, in turn borrowed from a Semitic language, probably Hebrew or Arabic.
The problem only really arises when one tries to classify a language purely on the basis of syntax, fully voiding it of usage. I feel you might have either enjoyed linguistics as a field of study, or perhaps hated it for not being as "grammarian" as you expect. The truth is (and that is evident in the fact that even grammarians in antiquity argued over forms as explained in the video) that the vocative forms of words are highly dependent on pragmatic situation and not really on speech content, i.e. semantics, and have one simple rule (for truly Latin words): if it ends in -us, isn't neuter and not part of the u-declension (or happens to end in -us in the nominative for other reasons), make -e out of -us (except for deus). The rest is sound elision and lenghtening, which can be found in all languages. Whether we call something a case will depend on its distinctiveness in usage and whether separate forms exist for that usage case. It is true that the classification of the ablative in Latin hinges very much on distinctions from the dative in only few declensions (true locative forms only exist for some words and could be considered genitive), but even if you wanted to classify the dative as a case that has some separate forms for certain uses in some declensions, it would still bear the hallmarks of a case, reigned by prepositions or certain semantic relations to other words in the sentence. The vocative both lacks these features AND is only distinguishable from nominative in one declension. From a didactic perspective at least, it makes total sense not to call it a case, as this tends to mean you have to give another row to all those declension tables for something that can be summarized with the rule above and is only used in a pragmatic, dialogical situation (i.e. rarely in the original texts students mostly read).
@@theopuscula I actually never hated linguistics. I stilly study it today, just not for academics, only as a hobby.
@@damouze That's great. I never claimed you hated linguistics. I can't judge your efforts or knowledge from one comment, but it at least somewhat points to the type of person that would fall more into the language (learning)-lover/polyglot category than the linguist category. Nothing bad about this, of course, but many people from this category find actual linguistics frustrating when they do have to study it. (I used to teach these people, so have some experience). For instance, the high-school type of approach, "grammar", would already be too simplistic for a linguistic discussion.
@@theopuscula Ah, ok. No worries.
Ah, I see.
I do not consider myself anything more than an amateur. I call myself an 'amateur linguist' simply because, other than maybe in secondary school, I never had any formal training in it and because the term 'linguist' feels more broad than 'grammarian'. I am interested in more than just the grammar of a language, or the phonology or morphology. I am interested in all of them and how each of these evolved over time.
I remember when I first read about the various sound changes that happened in the Indo-European languages, say for instance the second German sound shift. At first you take these 'rules' at face value, but once you apply them or see them applied enough you start to 'hear them in your head' so to speak, and they start to make sense and you begin to see the patterns. And then you start to form theories. They don't always pan out, but you always learn from them.
Would I find the actual study boring were I doing it in an academic setting? I honestly do not know. I do not find it boring so far doing it as a hobby. But maybe that's just it: there's no pressure ;-).
Non scholae, sed vitae discimus.
Wow, Luke! You just took me back to my days of high school and college Latin! I'm shocked at just how much of this I remember. Thanks so much!
Thanks for watching!
Definitely! You’ve got a new fan!😀
A Welsh character in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives Of Windsor" refers to the "focative" case. It is perhaps the only time Shakespeare hints at a certain expletive in the English language.
WInston Churchill, recalling his schooldays:
"But," I repeated," what does it mean?"
"Mensa means a table," he answered.
"Then why does mensa also mean O table," I enquired, "and what does O table mean?"
"Mensa, O table, is the vocative case," he replied.
"But why O table?" I persisted in genuine curiosity.
"O table - you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table." And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, "You would use it in speaking to a table."
"But I never do," I blurted out in honest amazement.
"If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely," was his conclusive rejoinder.
Such was my first introduction to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.
A wonderful anecdote
“Well, Winston, just for that, I’m going to make you translate a Latin ode to a table someday”
I guess English *kinda* has a vocative, if you count the particle *O*, like in, "Hear me, O Lord," or, "O happy dagger, this is thy sheath," or some similar situation. But it's incredibly specific. (Edited for accuracy) Tamil has a vocative case formed with an -ē added to the end of the word. Although Tamil’s case system is so regular that the cases used on the normal nouns are also used on pronouns (why doesn’t every language with cases do this?), pronouns cannot be put into the vocative. As an example of the vocative, the noun ஆண் (man [adult male human]) in the vocative becomes ஆணே. Romanized, that’s ān to ānē. If it were plural, then the plural suffix -கள் (-kal) would be applied, then the vocative suffix, which is the same for singular and plural. The vocative plural of ஆண் is அண்களே (ānkalē)
I have a feeling that the popularity using the O in “O Lord” is due to the fact that the King James Bible etc were translating from Latin and Greek, which do have the vocative, into English, which doesn’t. So in trying to make that vocative very clear, they probably grammaticalised the use of “O Lord” to mean Lord in the vocative. I’m sure people were using O like this in English before, but it’s possibly that analogy to Latin and Greek made this more solidified
An interesting observation in general regarding this point is that English does not only have the vocative case, but also the dative, instrumental and other cases. The only difference to Latin, Russian or PIE among other highly inflected languages is that English communicates these ideas not by case endings, but by prepositions and the likes of them.
On that note, I would like to know if one could call the japanese and korean particle-system a form of inflection as well. Technically they come at the end of a noun and communicate different cases, which is not different to grammatical paradigms, right?
@@JoshuaNichollsMusic The O is often used along with the Vocative in Latin too.
@@taha_bin_mehdi it’s about conveying the idea. Some languages do it by cases, other by the use of prepositions. The use of cases is not the idea a way of expressing it. So not really, English doesn’t have a case system. It only has very limited remnants of it subject and object form for pronouns: I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, they/them. Historically, Middle English used to have cases.
nānē, the pronoun exclusively used for talking to yourself
It's always funny to me when someone explains how noun declension in some language works like, while I have it in my native language and it's like the most obvious thing in the world 😅
Try learning a language that has a case yours doesn't.
I still don't understand what question ablative is supposed to answer, when genitive would naturally suffice.
Or the dozen different locatives of Finnish. That one's an absolute brainwringer.
@@povilzem Yes, it always can get harder. It could be also confusing when a language uses different cases often in completely different role, like German.
what is your language
@@nafismubashir2479 Polish.
I was so nervous you were going to stumble while walking backwards! Great lesson as always!
Thanks!
Amazing content as always, Luke. I only recently discovered your channel and really enjoy your analysis of Latin in both real and fictional settings. I would love to see you tackle High Gothic from Warhammer 40,000, which is a mixture of both real Latin and a pseudo-Latin used by the human empire of that universe, the Imperium of Man. It's primarily inspired by Ecclesiastical Latin since the Imperial religion is heavily based on the Catholic Church.
Thanks. I’ll look into it
7:04 Close call, Luke! :)
Haha. Nah, I knew she was there. I used to give guided tours years ago. (That’s how I learned to walk backwards)
I feared for his life
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, this is a really useful skill! The video turned out to be more spectacular, dynamic and funny!
I wanted to suggest an idea for a video if what I'm going to ask is really worth considering. I'm wondering if there is any particular story as to why the final consonant of the stem in the third declension nouns often changes in the nominative case? Is it a natural course of things, or does it happen "just because, nobody knows"? Does the fact that later Romance languages inherited the noun stem, and not the nominative case, mean that people instinctively continued to understand that, for example, the stem of words like pāx or gēns is pāc- and gent-? It is very curious to observe this when you trace the etymology of words, for example, in Spanish or Italian. The first question that arises in your head when you find out that, for example, the word "ciudad" comes from the accusative "cīvitātem", and not the nominative "cīvitās", which would be more logical from the point of view of a modern person. I have heard such an explanation that it was easier for people in the era of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, speaking forms of popular Latin, when the final consonant of the stem did not disappear, so it was preserved. But could it be that simple?
I hope the question is clear and I'm not looking for meaning where there is none :)
And a general question to you personally: Do you agree with the idea that the stems from which words originate in a particular group of languages (for example, Indo-European, Semitic, Turkic) were originally just a random set of sounds that later began to take on meanings, and theoretically words in modern languages could look different, but have a similar appearance and decline according to similar principles?
ó, vokative! 😋 as a native speaker of a lang with vocative, i like it and am used to it. if czeching ;-) our declensions, only substantīva with -e, -o, -í (practically all neutra) have N = V (= A). and as those two grammarians we have our own disputationes about proper forms, e. g. my name "jan" is often in V "jene", but i use "jane" cos of the [a] which makes the ending more [ɛ], otherwise people tend to say [jene]. and the masculine nouns ending in -dce are often popularly vocativised to -dče rather than to "correct" -dce.
Very informative and clear video! Grātiās, Lucī 😉.
Virus is second declension? Looking it up I see my dictionaries agree with you. So I wonder why I thought it was fourth declension. About 20 years ago I tried to tell a cousin that the Latin plural would be virus, not viri -- but it looks like I was wrong. :(
I thought the same 🤔🤔
We have a vocative case for many nouns in Australian English. You take the first syllable of the first name and add -o to the end. E.g. Robert->Robbo, John->Johnno, Tom->Tommo, Steven->Stevo. Like Latin there are exceptions e.g. Barry->Bazza.🙂
Thanks Luke!!
Gratias Lvci!
6:56 cave birotariam!
Did I just watch Captain Picard explaining the Latin vocative?
🖖
Could the vocative case also be a mark of affection or familiarity with the person you're talking to? Like the use of "a" or "ah" + name in some Malay dialects.
And Luke is an expert at walking backwards in Rome!
There are diminutives for affection
you can use the vocative case with a first person verb to get a "I, name, do solemnly swear" type of construction in Latin too. So in Seneca's Agamemnon: "fugio Thyestes inferos, superos fugo", "I, Thyestes, flee the hells, the heavens I bring to flight"
also, no homo, "I, a man, swim"
great luke wearing porpora shirt roma color even of the football club .
Im going to Rome in August, itd be funny if I see you recording a video while Im there lol
The vocative case is used more in formal Polish, but even here it feels somewhat archaic, more so as time goes by. It has vanished, I think, in Russian. I remember, when learning Latin, we had to memorize the declensions, always in the N, G, D, Acc, Abl, V order, including the Vocative at the end, yes, even though it was always the same as the Nominative, but for the 2nd declension "-us" case as you point out. Still, there was a certain rhythm to it that helped us memorize the stuff, and that Eddie Izzard makes fun of in one of his stand-up comedy jokes (also Monty Python in Life of Brian).
10:52 Aw, I wanted a resolution. I wondered if these two grammarians recognised Aulus Gellius and greeted him...
Yeah it’s in salt frustrating haha
I must correct myself, sort of. The Polish Dictionary of Correct Polish instructs to decline “mezczyzna” as a feminine noun throughout. However, the fact remains that in colloquial usage, the nominative often replaces the vocative as in “babcia” rather than “babciu” (“grandma!”).
Wow, that camera work is great.
Hey mate is, vivre gladio aut mori per eam.
A suitable translation for "live by the sword, or die by it." Hate to muck up my first tattoo. Cheers!
So avus for grandfather would also transform to ave in the vocative case?
Yes!
In portuguese, we lost the vocative case unfortunately.
Oh God, Luke, I was dying to ask you where the long vowels are in the phrase "Ave, imperator..." do you have a video on how popular latin phrases are pronounced or would you care to make one? On the subject, south slavic languages are also very similar in building the vocative, sometimes it is same as nominative, especially with names, other times it would be very clumsy to use nominative. Say, nominative for word wolf is "vuk" but vocative is "Zdravo, vuče" (Hello, wolf), mostly for nouns ending in a consonant...however one could mostly use nominative for vocative in a pejorative or teasing meaning.
So I have been wondering if a Roman from the city itself, who lived around 100 BC would have magically been transported into the Rome of 250 A.D. Would that Roman even recognize its own city, would he still understand the language, the way people dressed, the food and all the other manners of 250 AD Rome?
Romanian has the vocative case, but its usage varies along sociolinguistic lines. In the cities and among the educated classes it's not much of a thing anymore. I was in the Czech Republic at the university for a semester and I heard my advisor there address his colleague using the vocative case, and it threw me for a loop. Her name ends in -a, and he used -o, just like it would be in Romanian, but this social context was all wrong, and I was like wtf just happened?
Cave, Luci! Ambulare retrorsum in lapides valde periculosum est, nonne? :)
I love it when you are at the colosseum
What was the vocative singular of the second declension masculine noun deus? I remember my high school teacher saying it was the same as the nominative case, in order avoid the rather bizarre form dee. Would you agree? In liturgical Latin I've certainly only ever used deus.
I’m practice Classical Latin always uses the plural vocative dī. Later Christian authors use deus
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you, that's very interesting.
interesting! We still retain the vocative in Welsh, but, we don't have declensions in Welsh any more, they were lost when Brythonic became Welsh after the Roman occupation. It seems the 300+ years of interaction between the Brythonic language (the indigenous Celtic language what is now the whole of the territory south of Edinburgh including what is now England) 'upset' the grammar of Brythonic, where by we lost the neuter case, the genative, cases and developed mutations.
In Welsh we do use the vocative usually for people, so "plant" (children) => blant! (as in, hey children, play time is over!); bechgyn => fechgyn (boys!); merched => ferched! (girls!); cyfaill = gyfaill (friend/comrade), Cymru => Gymry (Welsh people!) So we use the Welsh mutation system to run the vocative. We used to mutate personal names too (as Scots Gaelic still does) but that's rarely done today.
so interesting! Can somebody explain to me (or point out the time in the video, in case i missed it) why there is a (perceivable) vocative only in 2nd declension?
Going out now to talk to some crows...
Noli me esse, lupe
is on a par with that famed greek sentence in my manual: Ουχ ίππος ειμι .
I would much more likely talk to my daughter-in-law, if I had one, than to a cypress tree. But "nurus" is fourth-declension, unlike its ancestor "*snusós", which is second-declension (fourth would be **snusús). How come? And both Spanish and Russian have moved it to the first declension.
As IE languages change we frequently see nouns switch declensions. Note how Slavic is quite standardized to consonant/vowel ending. And in Latin pīnus can be 2 or 4 decl
Nora em português.
Hey hey, love ur channel and try to learn some Latin! One question: shouldn't it be "noli me edere, lupe" or something? Or is "esse" also a word for eating in this case? Keep up the good work!!!!
Both are fine.
Not really; “edere” does not occur in Classical Latin; it’s mostly a simplification that was used in Mediaeval Latin. I recommend ēsse
Thank you :)
ēsse (distinct from esse with a short vowel) is the classical form, while edere is a late analogical form
5:35 I was waiting for the one name which has a separate vocative form in English. I thought that the vocative of Iesus was Iesu. That's where we get Jesu from, isn't it? Isn't that another of these Ancient Greek vocatives borrowed into Latin?
That’s true! The Greek vocative of Ιησοῦς is Ιησοῦ, hence Jēsus to Jēsū as the Latin versions.
Gaeilge has this too, right?
It does
You have forgotten to talk about the vocative of "meus".
Vocative is still in use in romanesco, central and southern italian dialects. It's just that the speakers don't know it, cause nobody does bother to study the dialects' grammar.
Have you moved to Rome or something? How are you able to make so many vidoes in Italy?
Please do a video about the subjunctive
I have recently
@@polyMATHY_Luke And I missed it!? How can I forgive myself!?
Still used in Polish too, although mostly in formal conversations, so e.g "I ty, Brucie?" (Lat. Et tu, Brute?) being a question asked of a friend is unlikely to happen.
I suppose languages do have a tendency to get rid of vocatives by compensating with context Instead.
ahhahahhahah, 3:10, you make me break in 2
A zi, sei un orgoglio per l'america e per l'italia. Oh, dimenticavo, e per il regno dell'Urbe ;)
Molto gentile, grazie
Similarly in Polish, certain words in the nominative look feminine, ending in “a,” as for example “meszczyzna” (“man,” ironically ). But it is declined as a masculine noun in oblique declensions. So”meszczyznie!,” not “meszczyzno!”
How long do you plan to stay in Rome, Luke?
I feel vocative is mostly dysfunctional in Latin, as it doesn't occur in so many words (I mean it doesn't have a distinctive form, so it's not really usefur for comprehension to have one). By the way, how comes there is vocative on the second declension and not the others ? I guess one should go back to PIE to understand what's happening here.
By the way, what is the vocative for words in -eus? In another comment, the name Thēseus was cited to have a vocative in -eu, but it's from Greek, so I guess it doesn't count.
Vocative would be -ee
E.g. Nom. “ferreus” Voc “ferree”
@@xshwei Well, given that the vocative of words in -ius is -ī, I doubt a little.
@@Columbator look up attestations on PHI Latin texts
Luke, is there a difference among mea, mei, meo, and just 'me'?
If so, how should we use them?
Augustus smiles down on you
6:53 Accident avoided
Hello Luke! I was wondering what serif font do you use for your videos?
7:00 Luke's insidious attempt to get hit by a bicycle fails.
lol I knew it was there. I’ve done this a lot
why did you spell the greeting at the beginning "Have" and not "ave" ?
I explain here: th-cam.com/video/u84EgaNKLAM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=CgvzjMyWsE_rIFgA
What is the vocative for Deus? Is it Dee? But I haven’t seen that, so I am asking here. Εννόω, θα ακουγόταν σαν «Θεέ», ναι ή όχι;
"Latin doesn't like to end things with a short letter i" (6:57). Except "mihi," "tibi," and "sibi"? Or am I mixed up about them?
The older, regular forms with long ī are found in Plautus and Terentius. The forms with short i are a result of iambic shortening, a process in which a final long vowel of two-syllable words would... shorten, hence also bĕnĕ instead of bĕnē
Wasn't it Ave?
actually isnt a large part of 2nd decl f names of plants? do those get the treatment considering they are otherwise more regular, including in semantics ig
Many are indeed plants, and their use in the vocative is attested by Vergil, among others.
the language most spoken by the ancient Romans was Greek, Latin in the high spheres of the civil and military public administration of the Empire
in italian high scholl the peoples study GREEK, and LATINO is the base of CLASSIC AND ARTISTIC and SCIENTIFIC study of hight school
Yes same here in greece we study ancient greek all throughout junior high/middle school and the first year of high school and the students who want to study Humanities (such as myself ) also study ancient greek and latin the second and third year of high school and we are also examined in this subject in both our final high school exams and the university entering exams
Why is the vocative of Deus Deo? And not Dei
This video sets off my anxiety so much watching you walk backwards
Worry not! I used to be a your guide and did this up and down stairs and hills.
yo tengo una duda concerniente a la palabra vulgus porq se escribe con u? y no vlgus?
That is not standard orthography. Latin in standard orthography uses V and U as different letters. Old Spanish used to do what the ancient Romans did: make no distinction. I prefer the modern way
I personally still think, that it is not really a semantic case, especially if it just used when one 'screams' after someone (If I have gotten it rightly by my teachers in Latin and you 😉).
The semantic meaning otherwise is already in the second person of the verb.
That might be the reason why it has died out (or is at the moment) in most languages, like Latvian for example, where it is still used smt. , but not always and mostly not part of paradigms. It's just told, "if you call after someone (male), leave the -s -ending away".
So, to me it is more some kind of a speech change - created by a change in intonation, or, basically stress on some phonetic muscles, if you scream, or put more "force" into your speechI personally still think, that it is not really a semantic case, especially if it just used when one 'screams' after someone (If I have gotten it rightly by my teachers in Latin and you 😉).
The semantic meaning otherwise is already in the second person of the verb.
That might be the reason why it has died out (or is at the moment) in most languages, like Latvian for example, where it is still used smt. , but not always and mostly not part of paradigms. It's just told, "if you call after someone (male), leave the -s -ending away".
So, to me it is more some kind of a speech change - created by a change in intonation, or, basically stress on some phonetic muscles, if you scream, or put more "force" into your speech, especially if we consider that the "-us" used to be an 'ous' before and might have been still spoken as some kind of deeper 'u' (maybe this was also the reason why there's been still a separate "u-Declension" beside the "o-Declension?)
If you scream a name like "Lucius", the "-ius" turns easily into some kind of a Schwa-sound, which might also explain why it's "Luce" and not "Lucie"...
Another observation I've made is, the more 'flat-bottomed' the intonation if a language is , the more morphems it has [or otherway round?🤔] :
Most agglutinating languages have a rather 'flat', non voiced intonation, see Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, just to name a few of even different language families. The same seem to be true for strongly flectating languages, which there aren't that many contemporary examples like Russian or Lithuanian, -but since we know that Latin had this 'highness'-accent/intonation, also there might be a pattern.
Long story short, German for example has some kind of a 'non-screaming' vocative, like Czech or Ukrainian, too: But it is in the intonation. Just like it hasn't got a question-particle like '-ne?', but the meaning is on the intonation (yes, most often you change the word-order to mark a question, but you can also ask some questions without changing it, mostly when you presume a "yes"-answer and to me as a mother-speaker the intuitively 'feeling' of 'this is a question' comes mostly from the intonation.
Quite the same goes for the distinction inclusive and exclusive "we", that some lang. have morphems for: You clearly raise your voice in German, wether to include the listener or not, just like there's a huge difference in just saying the name of smo. (insofar semantic 'nominative') and talking to smo. (insofar semantic 'vocative'), even if it doesn't appear written on the paper.
If one now compares Russian and Ukrainian, Ukrainian is spoken more 'tongue-down' and lesser voiced so it is phonetically more likely that a voice change also creates some change of the ending, in the vocative case, so it retained it, wheras Russian didn't.
I'm just a beginner in Latin, but in "Noli me esse, lupe", I thought esse meant "to be"? I would probably have said, "Noli me comedere, lupe". To me it sounds like you're telling the wolf to "not to be me". Is this maybe a sort of colloquialism?
Occasionally, the verb edere is used as an irregular verb with esse as the infinitive.
Indeed, actually “edere” almost never occurs, always ēsse
That is “esse”, not “ēsse”.
@@oraetlabora1922 esse = to be; ēsse = to eat
@@Alexander-tx4bw In fact, ēsse is the original irregular form as an athematic verb (ed-se > ēsse), and edere was remade analogically from the other tenses (the present indicative forms were affected too) as ed-e-se > edere.
5:02 "...salve, virus"
Potius tandem "Vale, virus!" (Id quidem spero...)
Question, is Google translate's latin pronunciation good? Beacuse I'm learning latin and I use it to learn how to pronounce correctly.
Honestly, if you're trying to learn restored classical pronunciation you should watch Luke's audio recordings of the LLPSI on his second channel, Scorpio Martianus. He also has tons of pronunciation guides on both channels, just consume the content and get used to making the sounds. Luckily Latin is a very consistent language when it comes to pronunciation so if you master the vowel and consonant sounds you can do a reasonable job of pronouncing any word!
@@tezradmar4012 Thank you, also do you know a good online latin dictonary that has accents marked on words?
"I think I just finished...oh!" -Luke 2022
Romanian language has a vocative too [nominative: "domnul" (Sir) vocative: "imediat domnule" (imediately Sir)]
Bogdan - Bogdane!
Dragoș - Dragoșe!
Ana - Ano!
Iulia - Iulio!
Andrei - Andrei (does not have vocative, possibly merger of i and e in "Andreie" along with lack of distinctive gemination in our language)
Idiot - Idiotule! (Notice it also is articulated with the definite article, since you are adressing directly a specific idiot :)))
It's very much vibrant and used by everyone.
In the last case it's funny, because the definite article follows the noun (Balkan sprachbund rules, likely remnants of thracian grammar) but the vocative is very much Latin. While the names are of course, quite slavic historically:))
Latin has rules for each situation, but so many exceptions in which I find myself lost xD
Hey Luke! How would you translate "Quis Necavit Equitem" to English?
my take: Who killed the cavalry man / rider
how you you say "Hello, Legionaries!" in the sense of a legatus speaking to his legion
Use my Latin Dictionaries video, and you should find the solution on your own
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻