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

Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:

> Yes, I have often been wondering about that too. BTW I agree with Christian
> that the genitive "Jesu" sounds better to my ear.
Indeed.  What is surprising is that I found so many instances of
"Jesus Christi" in Google at all; perhaps these were people who thought,
as I did, that "Jesus" was an ordinary u-stem with plural in "-u:s".

> 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?
I used the Google Preferences page (http://www.google.com/preferences ,
requires Javascript) to select Dutch pages only, and then searched
for "Jesu Christi" (732 results), "Jesu Christo" (28 results),
and "Jesum Christum" (112 results).  Sparse but not zero.
Some of them may be embedded Latin, of course.  The top-ranking
hits are at http://cf.hum.uva.nl/dsp/ljc/revius/lof.html ,
http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_off001offe01/_off001offe01_003.htm ,
and http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_off001offe01/_off001offe01_005.htm
respectively.  (The second one is actually second-ranked, as the
top-ranked page is obviously in Antillean Creole Spanish, not Dutch.)
All 16th-century works, so surely the native Dutch cases are already gone.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths
led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen.  I am the clue-finder,
the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.  --Bilbo