Re: Inflecting Jesus Christ (was: Never violate a universal ...)

--- John Cowan skrzypszy:

>Nom: Jesus Christus ist der EINZIGE Weg zu Gott.
>Gen: Wir sind alle Glieder des Leibes Jesus Christi.
>Dat: Na, heute Morgen habe ich einen Telefonanruf von Jesu Christo
bekommen.
>Acc: Wir wollen nun untersuchen, was die Bibel tatsächlich über Jesum
>     Christum berichtet.
Yes, I have often been wondering about that too. BTW I agree with Christian
that the genitive "Jesu" sounds better to my ear.

>All examples are from actual German web pages, and I tried to avoid
>pre-20th-century texts.  In passing, I also spotted these forms
>in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Dutch, but I don't believe
>there was any live usage.
In Dutch? That would surprise me! Dutch has lost its case system completely
(apart from a few fixed expressions), and all that remains is a generic
genitive ending -s (or -'s) with a similar appearence and usage as in
English. Forms like the ones you quote above would seem very unnatural in
Dutch. Could you tell me where you found them?

FWIW, in Polish "Jezus" is inflected like the ending -us belonged to the
root: Jezusa, Jezusowi, etc., but the vocative is "Jezu".

Jan

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