# syne



## Miralasa

I've just found in the book a vocative case form "syne" instead of expected "synu". What is that and why was it used?


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## atcheque

Dobrý den,

Masculine vocative could be _-e_ or -_i_; _-u_ stands with -_k_: _-ku_.


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## Miralasa

That's weird. The Wiktionary states the Voc. of _syn_ is _synu_.


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## bibax

It is more complex. Old Czech (or Proto-Czech) had several declension types, similarly like Proto-Slavic, Common Slavic or Old Church Slavonic (see here).

In the masculine gender the types gradъ/vlьkъ (o-stem like Latin dominus, voc. domine) and domъ (u-stem like Latin domus) gradually merged and later created the animate and inanimate masculine declension. However some remnants remain.

Essentially the ending -u in vocative is a remnant of the u-stem declension. It is newly used if the root ends in -k/h/ch (as the ending -u, unlike -e, doesn't cause palatalization of the previous -k/h/ch), e.g. vlku! (instead of older vlče!), druhu! (instead of druže!), Svatý Duchu! (instead of archaic Svatý Duše!), ..., but člověče! (a new form člověku! is not in use).

After -n we use mostly the ending -e in vocative: pane, pelikáne, klaune, elektrone, Veliký Říjne (slavný a krásný )! ...

Voc. *synu!* is essentially a remnant, as the noun *synъ* was an u-stem noun. The voc. *syne!* could be a "modern" form, but it is not in use.

Now I've realized that the "new" form *syne* is sometimes used after *pane* in vocative.

Můj synu!

Můj nejmilejší pane syne! (in a letter)

Smiluj se nade mnou, Pane, Syne Davidův! _as well as_ Pane, Synu Davidův!


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## Enquiring Mind

Hi Miralasa, all I can add to bibax's concise explanation above is to refer you to a brand new (published in June 2016) Master's Thesis (in Czech) by Lucie Janků here (pdf file) at Masaryk (Brno) University entitled 'The Vocative in Czech'. She says (on page 56) that she studied the distribution of the -e and -u vocative suffixes in hard-declension masculine nouns in the Czech National Corpus and 'found a number of exceptions to the rule "-u after -k, -g, -ch, -h, but everywhere else -e".' The standard syn*u!* vocative, she notes, is actually one of the exceptions to this rule. As bibax notes, you would normally see -*e* as the vocative ending for a masculine noun whose nominative ends in *n*.

Karel Tahal, too, in his 'A Grammar of Czech as a Foreign Language' here (pdf file) refers (page 118) to the vocative synu! as a "special form" along with Bůh - Bože! and člověk - člověče! since they don't fit the "rules" for the masculine animate "hard" nouns with their respective endings.

May we ask where (in what kind of book) you saw the vocative form syn*e*? This form might be found in old texts, religious texts, or where the writer wishes to sound poetic, or where the style is very literary, or possibly a regional dialect.


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