Vocative for nominative

[Toma Tasovac]

On 09.10.2007., at 18.27, Olga Meerson wrote:

> What case is Sava in, in "Gimnazija Sveti Sava"? What case is Savo  
> in in "Osnovna škola Savo Ili"?

As I said, these are two different names. But it's probably better to  
say that they are two different variants of the same name. They are  
both nominative: Sveti Sava is Saint Sava, whereas Savo  
Ilic' (diacritic on c) is a Second World War hero, or Savo Milosevic  
-- a popular soccer player. Sava is more common in Serbia, Savo in  
Bosnia and Montenegro.  (The same applies to several other names, for  
example: Vlada/Vlado, Misha/Misho etc. It does not, however, apply to  
male names not ending in -a: Vladimir is only Vladimir).

Another interesting point is that the nominative Savo has the long  
rising accent on the first syllable, whereas the vocative of Sava,  
which in print looks the same -- Savo -- actually has the long  
falling accent on the first syllable. A native speaker who is not  
completely tone deaf should be able to tell these apart (although,  
watch out, because tone deafness is definitely spreading among the  
speakers of Serbian today.)

If you check the list of partisan heroes from the Second World War  
(who would have thought that they could come in so handy :) you will  
see that one of them is called Sava and a couple of them are called  
Savo. That's all.

http://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spisak_Narodnih_heroja_Jugoslavije

> Whatever cases they are (I do not know Serbian, so my questions are  
> really questions and not objections), these have nothing to do with  
> either nominative or vocative, judging by their function in the  
> sentence.

Sure they do, these were not sentences but names of two different  
schools, one using the name Sava (the saint), the other using Savo  
(the hero). What a juxtaposition!

I hope I didn't make things even more confusing now.

All best,
Toma

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