Comparison Distinct vocative forms are assumed to have existed in all early
Indo-European languages and survive in some. Here is, for example, the Indo-European word for "wolf" in various languages: The elements separated with hyphens denote the stem, the so-called thematic vowel of the case and the actual suffix. In Latin, for example, the nominative case is and the vocative case is , but the accusative case is . The asterisks before the Proto-Indo-European words means that they are theoretical reconstructions and are not attested in a written source. The symbol ◌̩ (vertical line below) indicates a consonant serving as a vowel (it should appear directly below the "l" or "r" in these examples but may appear after them on some systems from issues of font display). All final consonants were lost in Proto-Slavic, so both the nominative and vocative Old Church Slavonic forms do not have true endings, only reflexes of the old thematic vowels. Vocative singulars in Slavic languages appear to be irregular as a consequence of the
Slavic first palatalization, which caused *k, *g and *x, when followed by an *e (as in the vocative suffix), to become č, ž, and š, respectively. Some modern Slavic languages have replaced these forms with a more regular vocative ending, so for example in Czech the usual masculine animate vocative is -e, except for roots ending in velar consonants, where it is now usually -u (e.g. > , but > ). This is an instance of the paradigmatic complexity introduced into Slavic by successive waves of palatalisation, with some languages retaining more complex or irregular paradigms (such as Czech), and others tending towards simplification and regularization (such as Russian, which has lost the vocative as a productive case entirely).
Baltic languages Lithuanian The vocative is distinct in singular and identical to the nominative in the plural, for all inflected nouns. Nouns with a nominative singular ending in
-a have a vocative singular usually identically written but distinct in accentuation. In Lithuanian, the form that a given noun takes depends on its declension class and, sometimes, on its gender. There have been several changes in history, the last being the
-ai ending formed between the 18th and 19th centuries. The older forms are listed under "other forms". Some nouns of the e- and a- stems declensions (both proper ones and not) are stressed differently: "aikš
tė": "
aikšte!" (
square); "tau
ta": "
tauta!". In addition, nouns of e-stems have an
ablaut of long vowel
ė in nominative and short vowel
e in vocative. In pronunciation,
ė is
close-mid vowel , and
e is open-mid vowel . The vocative of diminutive nouns with the suffix
-(i)ukas most frequently has no ending:
broliùk "brother!", etc. A less frequent alternative is the ending
-ai, which is also slightly dialectal:
broliùkai, etc. Colloquially, some personal names with a masculine
-(i)(j)o stem and diminutives with the suffixes
-elis, -ėlis have an alternative vocative singular form characterized by a zero ending (i.e. the stem alone acts as the voc. sg.):
Adõm "Adam!" in addition to
Adõmai,
Mýkol "Michael!" in addition to
Mýkolai,
vaikẽl "kid!" in addition to
vaikẽli, etc.
Celtic languages Goidelic languages Irish The vocative case in
Irish operates in a similar fashion to Scottish Gaelic. The principal marker is the vocative particle , which causes
lenition of the following initial letter. In the singular there is no special form, except for first declension nouns. These are masculine nouns that end in a broad (non-palatal) consonant, which is made slender (palatal) to build the singular vocative (as well as the singular genitive and plural nominative). Adjectives are also
lenited. In many cases this means that (in the singular) masculine vocatives resemble the
genitive and feminine vocatives resemble the
nominative. The vocative plural is usually the same as the nominative plural except, again, for first declension nouns. In the standard language first declension nouns show the vocative plural by adding . In the spoken dialects, the vocative plural often has the same form as the nominative plural (as with the nouns of other declensions) or the dative plural (e.g. = Men!).
Scottish Gaelic The vocative case in
Scottish Gaelic follows the same basic pattern as Irish. The vocative case causes
lenition of the initial consonant of nouns. Lenition changes the initial sound of the word (or name). In addition, masculine nouns are slenderized if possible (that is, in writing, an 'i' is inserted before the final consonant) This also changes the pronunciation of the word. Also, the particle is placed before the noun unless it begins with a vowel (or f followed immediately by a vowel, which becomes silent when lenited). Examples of the use of the vocative personal names (as in Irish): The name "Hamish" is just the English spelling of (the vocative of and pronounced ), and thus is actually a Gaelic vocative. Likewise, the name "Vairi" is an English spelling of , the vocative for .
Manx The basic pattern is similar to Irish and Scottish. The vocative is confined to personal names, in which it is common. Foreign names (not of Manx origin) are not used in the vocative. The vocative case causes
lenition of the initial consonant of names. It can be used with the particle "". The name is actually the Manx vocative of (Mary).
Brythonic languages Welsh Welsh lacks case declension but marks vocative constructions by lenition of the initial consonant of the word, with no obligatory particle. Despite its use being less common, it is still used in formal address: the common phrase means "gentlemen and ladies", with the initial consonant of undergoing a soft mutation; the same is true of ("[dear] friends") in which has been lenited. It is often used to draw attention to at public notices orally and written – teachers will say "" (mutation of ) and signage such as one right show mutation of to draw attention to the importance of the notice.
Germanic languages English The vocative is not a grammatical case in English. Expressions for which the vocative would be used in languages which have that case, are nominative in English. In translations of languages that use the vocative case, translators have sometimes added the
particle "O" before the noun, as is often seen in the
King James Version of the
Bible: for example the Greek
ὀλιγόπιστοι, vocative masculine plural (in
Matthew 8:26), is translated "O ye of little faith". While it is not strictly archaic, it is sometimes used to "archaeise" speech; it is often seen as very formal, and sees use in rhetoric and poetry, or as a comedic device to subvert modern speech. Another example is the recurrent use of the phrase "O (my) Best Beloved" by
Rudyard Kipling in his
Just So Stories.
O may be considered a form of
clitic and should not be confused with the interjection
oh. However, as the
Oxford English Dictionary points out, "O" and "oh" were originally used interchangeably. Modern English commonly uses the objective case for nouns of address but sets them off from the rest of the sentences with pauses as interjections, rendered in writing as commas (the
vocative comma). Two common examples of nouns of address in English are the phrases "Mr. President" and "Madam Chairwoman". Some traditional texts use
Jesu, the Latin vocative form of
Jesus. One of the best-known examples is ''
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring''.
German dialects In some
German dialects, like the
Ripuarian dialect of
Cologne, it is common to use the (gender-appropriate) article before a person's name. In the vocative phrase then the article is, as in Venetian and Catalan, omitted. Thus, the determiner precedes nouns in all cases except the vocative. Any noun not preceded by an article or other determiner is in the vocative case. It is most often used to address someone or some group of living beings, usually in conjunction with an imperative construct. It can also be used to address dead matter as if the matter could react or to tell something astonishing or just happening such as "Your nose is dripping."
Colognian examples:
Icelandic The vocative case generally does not appear in
Icelandic, but a few words retain an archaic vocative declension from Latin, such as the word , which is in the vocative. That comes from Latin, as the Latin for Jesus in the nominative is and its vocative is . That is also the case in traditional English (without the accent) (see
above): The native words and also sometimes appear in the shortened forms and in vocative phrases. Additionally, adjectives in vocative phrases are always weakly declined, but elsewhere with proper nouns, they would usually be declined strongly:
Norwegian Nouns in
Norwegian are not inflected for the vocative case, but adjectives qualifying those nouns are; adjectival
adjuncts modifying vocative nouns are inflected for the
definite (see: Norwegian language#Adjectives). The definite and plural inflections are in most cases identical, so it is more easily observable with adjectives that inflect for plural and definite differently, e.g. being when definite, but when plural, an instance of
suppletion. This is not the case when in vocative constructions.
Greek In
Ancient Greek, the vocative case is usually identical to the nominative case, with the exception of first-declension masculine nouns (ending in -ας or -ης), second-declension non-neuter nouns (ending in -ος) and third-declension non-neuter nouns. In the first declension, masculines in -ᾱς have the vocative in -ᾱ (νεᾱνίᾱ); those in -της have -ᾰ (πολῖτα), all others in -ης have -η (Ἀτρείδη) except names of nations and compounds: Πέρσᾰ, Σκύθᾰ, γεω-μέτρᾰ, παιδο-τρίβᾰ. has a recessive accent vocative . Second-declension masculine and feminine nouns have a regular vocative ending in -ε. Third-declension nouns with one syllable ending in -ς have a vocative that is identical to the nominative (, night); otherwise, the stem (with necessary alterations, such as dropping final consonants) serves as the vocative (nom. , voc. ; nom. , gen. , voc. ). Irregular vocatives exist as well, such as nom. Σωκράτης, voc. Σώκρατες. In
Modern Greek, second-declension masculine nouns still have a vocative ending in -ε. However, the accusative case is often used as a vocative in informal speech for a limited number of nouns, and always used for certain modern Greek person names: "" "Come here, Christos" instead of "". Other nominal declensions use the same form in the vocative as the accusative in formal or informal speech, with the exception of learned
Katharevousa forms that are inherited from Ancient Greek (Demotic , "Greek man"), which have the same nominative and vocative forms instead.
Iranian languages Kurdish Kurdish has a vocative case. For instance, in the dialect of
Kurmanji, it is created by adding the suffix at the end of
masculine words and the suffix at the end of
feminine ones. In the
Jafi dialect of
Sorani it is created by adding the suffix of at the end of names. Instead of the vocative case, forms of address may be created by using the grammatical particles (feminine) and (masculine):
Indo-Aryan languages Hindi-Urdu In
Hindi-
Urdu (
Hindustani), the vocative case has the same form as the nominative case for all singular nouns except for the singular masculine nouns that terminate in the vowel and for all nouns in their plural forms the vocative case is always distinct from the nominative case. Adjectives in
Hindi-Urdu also have a vocative case form. In the absence of a noun argument, some adjectives decline like masculine nouns that do not end in . The vocative case has many similarities with the
oblique case in Hindustani. }
Sanskrit In
Sanskrit, the vocative ( ) is morphologically distinct from the nominative only in the singular. In vowel-stem nouns, if there is a in the nominative, it is omitted and the stem vowel may be altered: and become , becomes , and become short and becomes . Consonant-stem nouns have no ending in the vocative:
Slavic languages Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic has a distinct vocative case for many stems of singular masculine and feminine nouns, otherwise it is identical to the nominative. When different from the nominative, the vocative is simply formed from the nominative by appending either ( : ) or ( : ), but occasionally ( : , : , : ) and ( : , : , : , : ) appear. Nouns ending with have a vocative ending of ( : , : ), likewise nouns ending with assume the vocative suffix ( : ). This is similar to Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, and Sanskrit, which also employ the
-e suffix in vocatives.
Bulgarian Unlike most other
Slavic languages,
Bulgarian has lost case marking for nouns. However, Bulgarian preserves vocative forms. Traditional male names usually have a vocative ending. More-recent names and foreign names may have a vocative form but it is rarely used (, instead of simply Richard, sounds unusual or humorous to native speakers). Vocative phrases like (Mr. Minister) have been almost completely replaced by nominative forms, especially in official writing. Proper nouns usually also have vocative forms, but they are used less frequently. Here are some proper nouns that are frequently used in vocative: Vocative case forms also normally exist for female given names: Except for forms that end in -, they can be considered rude and are often avoided, especially in some regions of Bulgaria. For female kinship terms, the vocative is always used:
Czech In
Czech, the vocative (, or – ) usually differs from the nominative in masculine and feminine nouns in the singular. It is a common dialectal feature of Czech to use the nominative with female names () or when following a title (, , ). It is particularly prevalent in regional dialects, such as those of
Moravia, where it has been the only form in use for hundreds of years. The full vocative remains part of the official standard
propagated by the Czech government. In the Czech Republic and elsewhere in eastern Europe, language competence is often conflated with adherence to official norms, and the use of the nominative - while common - may therefore be stigmatised.
Polish In
Polish, the vocative () is formed with feminine nouns usually taking except those where the last consonant is soft e.g. , , , and , which take . Feminine nouns that end with , usually in the suffixes and , as well as feminine nouns that end with a soft consonant, usually words with the suffix , but also irregular words like take the ending . Feminine nouns that end with a hardened consonant e.g. take the ending . Masculine nouns generally follow the complex pattern of the
locative case, with the exception of a handful of words such as , and . Neuter nouns and all plural nouns have the same form in the nominative and the vocative: The latter form of the vocative of is now considered poetical. The
nominative is increasingly used instead of the vocative to address people with their proper names. In other contexts the vocative remains prevalent. It is used: • To address an individual with the function, title, other attribute, family role • (Doctor!), (Chairman!) • (You arrive too late, swimmer) • (son), (mum), (dad) • After
adjectives,
demonstrative pronouns and
possessive pronouns • (You don't understand me, my dear Basia!) • To address an individual in an offensive or condescending manner: • ("Shut up, you buffoon!") • ("What are you staring at, idiot?") • ("Stop writing, idiot, you don't know what you're doing!") • ("Get lost, hillbilly!") • After "Ty" (second person singular pronoun) • (You liar!) • Set expressions: • The vocative is also often employed in affectionate and endearing contexts such as ("I love you, Chris!") or ("I miss you, my wife."). In addition, the vocative form sometimes takes the place of the nominative in informal conversations: instead of ("Joey's arrived"). When referring to someone by their first name, the nominative commonly takes the place of the vocative as well: instead of ("Anne, come here!").
Russian Historic vocative The historic Slavic vocative has been lost in
Russian and is now used only in archaic expressions. Several of them, mostly of
Old Church Slavonic origin, are common in colloquial Russian: "" (, vocative of "" , "God") and "" (, "My God!"), and "" (, vocative of "" , "Lord"), which can also be expressed as "" (, vocative of "" , "Jesus"). The vocative is also used in prayers: "" (, "Our Father!"), or the Russian version of the
Jesus Prayer ("Господ
и Иисус
е Христ
е"). Such expressions are used to express strong emotions (much like English "O my God!"), and are often combined (""). More examples of the historic vocative can be found in other Biblical quotes that are sometimes used as proverbs: "" (, "Physician, heal thyself", nom. "", ). Vocative forms are also used in modern
Church Slavonic. The patriarch and bishops of the
Russian Orthodox Church are addressed as "" (, hegemon, nom. "", ). In the latter case, the vocative is often also incorrectly used for the nominative to refer to bishops and patriarchs. These Old Church Slavonic words that are present in the current Russian language are known as "
fossil words".
New vocative In modern colloquial Russian,
given names and a small family of terms often take a special "shortened" form that some linguists consider to be a re-emerging vocative case. It is used only for given names and nouns that end in and , which are sometimes dropped in the vocative form: "" ("Lena, where are you?"). It is basically equivalent to "" but suggests a positive personal and emotional bond between the speaker and the person being addressed. Names that end in then acquire a
soft sign: "" = "" ("Olga!"). In addition to given names, the form is often used with words like "" (mom) and "" (dad), which would be respectively shortened to "" and "". The plural form is used with words such as "", "" (nom: "", "" guys, gals). Such usage differs from the historic vocative, which would be "" and is not related.
Serbo-Croatian In
Serbo-Croatian languages, distinct vocatives exist only for singular masculine and feminine nouns. Nouns of the neuter gender and all nouns in plural have a vocative equal to the
nominative. All vocative suffixes known from
Old Church Slavonic also exist in Serbo-Croatian. The vocative in Serbo-Croatian is formed according to one of three types of
declension, which are classes of nouns with the same declension suffixes.
First declension The first declension comprises masculine nouns that end with a consonant. These have a vocative suffix of either ( ) or ( ). Nouns terminating in have the vocative suffix: , , , as well as nouns possessing an unsteady : , , and the noun . All other nouns in this class form the vocative with : , , , , . In particular, masculine nouns ending with a
palatal or prepalatal consonant or form vocatives with the suffix: , , , , , , . Nouns ending with the
velars and are
palatalized to in the vocative: , , . A final becomes in the vocative: , . Likewise, a final becomes in only two cases: and . The loss of the unsteady can trigger a
sound change by hardening consonants, as in (not ), (not ) and (not ). There may be a loss of before like in (instead of ), (instead of ). When these phonetic alterations would substantially change the base noun, the vocative remains equal to the nominative, for example , , . This also holds true for foreign names ending with and like , , . Male names ending with and have a vocative equal to the nominative, for example: .
Second declension The second declension affects nouns with the ending '
. These are mainly of feminine but sometimes also of masculine gender. These nouns have a vocative suffix ': , , , . Exemptions to this rule are male and female given names, which have a vocative equal to the nominative, e. g. etc. However, this is different for twosyllabic names with an ascending accent such as female names and male names , etc., which form vocatives with '''': , etc. Denominations of relatives like , , '''' , , (parent's sister), '''' (mother's brother's wife), '''' (father's brother's wife) have vocatives equal to the nominative. This also holds true for country names ending in ''''. Nouns ending with the
diminutive suffix
-ica that consist of three or more syllables have a vocative with
-e:
učiteljica: učiteljice "female teacher",
drugarica: drugarice "girlfriend",
tatica: tatice "daddy",
mamica: mamice "mommy". This also applies to female names
Danica: Danice,
Milica: Milice,
Zorica: Zorice, and the male names
Perica: Perice,
Tomica: Tomice. Nouns of this class that can be applied to both males and females usually have a vocative ending of
-ico (
pijanica: pijanico "drunkard",
izdajica: izdajico "traitor",
kukavica: kukavico "coward"), but vocatives with
-ice are also seen. The use of vocative endings for names varies among Serbo-Croatian dialects. People in
Croatia often use only nominative forms as vocatives, while others are more likely to use grammatical vocatives.
Third declension The third declension affects feminine nouns ending with a consonant. The vocative is formed by appending the suffix '''' to the nominative ( , ).
Slovak Until the end of the 1980s, the existence of a distinct vocative case in
Slovak was recognised and taught at schools. Today, the case is no longer considered to exist except for a few archaic examples of the original vocative remaining in religious, literary or ironic contexts: In everyday use, the Czech vocative is sometimes retrofitted to certain words: Another stamp of vernacular vocative is emerging, presumably under the influence of
Hungarian for certain family members or proper names:
Ukrainian Ukrainian has retained the vocative case mostly as it was in
Proto-Slavic: There are some exceptions: It is used even for loanwords and foreign names: It is obligatory for all native names: It is used for patronymics:
Latin ?" from Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar, probably the most famous use of the vocative in literature. In
Latin, the form of the vocative case of a noun is almost always the same as the nominative. Exceptions include singular non-neuter second-declension nouns that end in in the nominative case. An example would be the famous line from Shakespeare, "" (commonly translated as "And you, Brutus?"): is the vocative case and would be the nominative. Nouns that end in end with instead of the expected . Thus, becomes and becomes . The shortening does not shift the accent so the vocative of is , with accent on the second syllable even though it is short. Nouns that end in and have vocatives that end in or even though the in the nominative is consonantal. First-declension and second-declension adjectives also have distinct vocative forms in the masculine singular if the nominative ends in , with the ending . Adjectives that end in have vocatives in so the vocative of is . Nouns and adjectives that end in do not follow the rules above. forms the vocative irregularly as or , while Christian does not have a distinct vocative and retains the form . "My God!" in Latin is thus , but
Jerome's
Vulgate consistently used as a vocative.
Classical Latin did not use a vocative of either, preferring to use the name of the god (and in reference to pagan gods, the Romans used the
suppletive form ). Greek names in Latin texts conserve their Greek vocative form. E. g., the vocative of is .
Romance languages West Iberian languages Portuguese drops the article to form the vocative. The vocative is always between commas and, like in many other languages, a particle
Ó is commonly used: In
Extremaduran and
Fala, some post-tonical vowels open in vocative forms of nouns, a new development that is unrelated to the Latin vocative case.
Catalan Catalan drops the article to form the vocative.
French Like English,
French sometimes uses (or historically used) a particle
Ô to mark vocative phrases rather than by change to the form of the noun. A famous example is the title and first line of the Canadian national anthem,
O Canada (French title:
Ô Canada), a vocative phrase addressing
Canada.
Romanian The vocative case in
Romanian is partly inherited, occasionally causing other morphophonemic changes (see also the article on
Romanian nouns): • singular masculine/neuter: '''''' as in • : (man, human being), • : or (boy), • : (cousin), • : (John); • singular feminine: '''''' as in • : (sister), • : (mad woman), also in masculine () • : (smart one (f), often used sarcastically), • : (Helen); Since there is no
-o vocative in Latin, it must have been borrowed from Slavic: compare the corresponding Bulgarian forms (), (), (). • plural, all genders: '''''' as in • : (brothers), • : (oxen, used toward people as an invective), • : (ladies and gentlemen). In formal speech, the vocative often simply copies the nominative/accusative form even when it does have its own form. That is because the vocative is often perceived as very direct and so can seem rude.
Romanesco dialect In
Romanesco dialect the vocative case appears as a regular
truncation immediately after the
stress. Compare (vocative, always truncated) : ''
France', vie' qua!'' :: "Francesco/Francesca, come here!" with (nominative, never truncated) :
Francesco/Francesca viene qua :: "Francesco/Francesca comes here"
Venetian Venetian has lost all case endings, like most other Romance languages. However, with feminine proper names the role of the vocative is played by the absence of the determiner: the personal article usually precedes feminine names in other situations, even in predicates. Masculine names and other nouns lack articles and so rely on
prosody to mark forms of address: Predicative constructions: ==Arabic==