Vocative for nominative

[Olga Meerson]

Thank you so much! One more question: the name of the deacon in our 
church is Balgoje. What is the -e at the end?
Thanks!
o.m.

Toma Tasovac wrote:

> 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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