Re: Case

At 21:47 +0100 14.7.1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>At 7:24 pm +0200 14/7/99, BP Jonsson wrote:
>>At 03:56 -0400 11.7.1999, John Cowan wrote:

>>BTW it occurs to me that "Iesus" is irregular in Latin itself.  AFAIK the
>>inflection is borrowed from greek but is irregular there too!  Ray?
>
>It is borrowed from Greek and certainly by classical standards it is
>irregular there also, being of course a borrowing from Aramaic.
Yes, Yeshua or something like that.

>But the Greek declension is not abnormal for the modern language nor IIRC
>for foreign names partially assimilated into Hellnic Greek.
I would regard the non-anomaly in the modern language a coincidence, (or in
case the whole language has aligned itself to the name of the Pantokratwr a
coincidence in the Gandalfian sense...)  Can you give other examples of
partially assimilated foreign names?  Beside Iesous I know only of such
that got wholly assimilated, like the Persian royal names, including late
forms like Valakhsh > Vologeses/Bologeses, Khosru > Chosroes, Narseh ->
Narses, and even Salok > Seloes (notwithstanding its Greek
origin--Seleukos!), Vahram > Bagranes* or not assimilated at all like most
Hebrew names (Isaak, Iakoub) and the bulk of Persian and Aramaic names
found in inscriptions.

[*I have no idea why they liked to put Persians into the first declension
-- onless it was the fact that most Old Persian names ended in -as, in
which case Dareios instead of *Dareias is an anomaly -- but they obviously
did!]

>It is given a
>final -s for nom., and a final -n for the acc. and no ending for the gen. &
>dative, thus:
[snip]

Which looks modern Greek enough, except that acc. -n is optional now.

>But Greek commonly had the definite article before proper names, so cases
>could usually be quite clearly distinguished.
Right.

>Similarly the Latin had only three forms: Iesus (nom.), Iesum (acc.) & Iesu
>(gen., dat, abl. and vocative).  The 'u' was long in the 1st cent. (but may
>have been shortened before the acc. -m) and the word was, following the
>Greek, irregularly stressed on the final.
>
>If German does indeed keep the Latin forms, then it should have:
>Jesus Christus (nom)
>Jesum Christum (acc)
>Jesu Christi (gen)
>Jesu Christo (dat)
Right.  Swedish has lost the separate vocative (except in some hymns!:) but
German retains it, AFAIK.

>Ray.
>
>
>========================================
>A mind which thinks at its own expense
>will always interfere with language.
>[J.G.Hamann - 1760]
>========================================

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)