Re: Vocatives

On Aug 25, 3:05 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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?

Modern American "Yo." Perhaps it originated in South Philly, since it
was given currency in the Rocky movies, but evidently it filled a felt
need, since it really caught on!

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Hungarian Notation
    ... It doesn't have to be conscious to be difficult, BTW (if you are translating from a language you do not speak well, you do not consciously run through every word you know). ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Vocatives
    ... The unnatural English "O" deserves nothing but the ridicule it ... What does it feel like to speak a language with a ... The problem comes up in translating. ... speaks to Moses and starts out "O ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Vocatives
    ... What does it feel like to speak a language with a ... The problem comes up in translating. ... speaks to Moses and starts out "O ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Lack of systematic teaching of Go
    ... of other people who have learned a foreign language, ... language, you translate what you say, hear, read and write in your mind. ... extra step and "understand" what you read/hear without first translating ... If you speak two or more languages, you have a larger pool of "words" ...
    (rec.games.go)
  • Re: Two Click disassembly/reassembly
    ... that time into hand translating all of his applications to the new CPU. ... which is one more reason the conversion to a different CPU is ... RosAsm, at this point). ... the first place -- the power of the native CPU's language. ...
    (alt.lang.asm)