[Multilingual Monday] Et tu, Brute??
It's a famous phrase -- "Et tu, Brute?" -- and it also illustrates today's topic: the vocative. The vocative is a case which means that a person is being directly addressed; in the aforementioned case Brute is the vocative of Brutus. The vocative can be found in English, especially older English -- see the title of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, where "o" (also "oh") sets off that you're talking directly to someone. "Hey", "yo", and similar phrases also set this off, but in modern English nothing but a comma and context set off when the vocative is being used -- see the now semi-famous pro-punctuation example "let's eat, Grandma" (vs. "let's eat Grandma").
Various languages have a word to indicate the vocative -- Arabic has يا, yaa, as seen in يا حبيبي, yaa habiibii, "O my love". Mandarin can use 阿, as in 阿爸, ā bà,"Oh dad", or 阿明, ah ming, "Oh Ming", using one of the two characters in the person's given name. You can also attach "Good old", 老, lăo, as in lăo wáng 老王, "Good old Wang".
Like Latin, many languages had an actual case for the vocative, but they've fallen out of use except for fossilized terminology. In Georgian this is the case, as in "man" (კაცი, katsi, becomes კაცო,katso, seen in, "რა გინდა, კაცო?", Ra ginda, katso?, "What do you want, man?"), "God" (The easy-to-pronounce ღმერთი, ghmerti becomes ღმერთო ghmerto, as in ღმერთო ჩმეი,ghmerto chemi, "Oh my God"), and a few other terms ("Dad", "Master", "Mom", &c.). It seems other languages seemingly only preserve the case in Biblical terms -- Russian has no vocative it seems outside of this (Боже мой, <>Bozhe moy, "My God", uses Боже, bozhe, a vocative form of Бог, Bog, "God"; similar can be seen in Господи, Gospodi, which is a vocative form of Господь, Gospod', "Lord").
I'd love further examples of the vocative in other languages, be them archaic, obsolete, current, slangy, amusing, or otherwise!
Various languages have a word to indicate the vocative -- Arabic has يا, yaa, as seen in يا حبيبي, yaa habiibii, "O my love". Mandarin can use 阿, as in 阿爸, ā bà,"Oh dad", or 阿明, ah ming, "Oh Ming", using one of the two characters in the person's given name. You can also attach "Good old", 老, lăo, as in lăo wáng 老王, "Good old Wang".
Like Latin, many languages had an actual case for the vocative, but they've fallen out of use except for fossilized terminology. In Georgian this is the case, as in "man" (კაცი, katsi, becomes კაცო,katso, seen in, "რა გინდა, კაცო?", Ra ginda, katso?, "What do you want, man?"), "God" (The easy-to-pronounce ღმერთი, ghmerti becomes ღმერთო ghmerto, as in ღმერთო ჩმეი,ghmerto chemi, "Oh my God"), and a few other terms ("Dad", "Master", "Mom", &c.). It seems other languages seemingly only preserve the case in Biblical terms -- Russian has no vocative it seems outside of this (Боже мой, <>Bozhe moy, "My God", uses Боже, bozhe, a vocative form of Бог, Bog, "God"; similar can be seen in Господи, Gospodi, which is a vocative form of Господь, Gospod', "Lord").
I'd love further examples of the vocative in other languages, be them archaic, obsolete, current, slangy, amusing, or otherwise!