Re: Case

On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> I read a brief grammar of Romanian that claimed the existence of five
> cases - nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and vocative, with
> nominative and accusative being identical in form, and genitive and
> dative being identical in form, and vocative having a distinct form
> (altho I'd never heard of a vocative case in Romanian - is that an
> archaism?)  I believe the example was something like
> Nominative
> homul (the man)
> Accusative
> homul (the man)
> Genetive
> homului (of the man)
> Dative
> homului (to the man)
> Vocative
> homule (Oh man!)
That's interesting! My entire experience, with the exception of a couple
of flips through a Teach Yourself Romanian book, is with Romanian coin
inscriptions.  Not much to go on, but this form does exist, though it
doesn't seem to be a vocative.  All I can say is that the inscription
changes (drastically) from "Carol I Domnul Romaniei" to "Carol I Rege al
Romaniei" and especially to "Carol II Regele Romanilor".  One seems to be
"King of Romania" while the other seems to be "King (of the) Romanians": I
bet the -le isn't voc. here, but nom. Hm. That's dumnul, rege and regele:
without a source to look in, I be stumpified.

Padraic.