Re: Vocatives

English does not have a vocative case. Apparently Common Indo-European
did and most people know it survived into Classical Latin. (Et tu,
Brute). The unnatural English "O" deserves nothing but the ridicule it
gets.

My question is: What does it feel like to speak a language with a
vocative?

The problem comes up in translating. The specific example I was
confronted with is from the Qur'an (that Arabic, at least, has a
vocative - a prefix "ya:-"). In the course of a narrative Pharaoh
speaks to Moses and starts out (in an unsatisfactory translation) "O
Moses .. ". The natural way to translate that would be "Pharaoh said
to Moses "..." but this is less literal (and we already have enough
trouble with Muslims who think the Qur'an cannot be translated).

Is there any better way to imitate the feeling of a vocative in a
language without one?

Some English dialects use "Hey" in much the same way as Arabic "Ya".

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