vocative In modern colloquial Russian, given names and a small family of terms often take a special "shortened" form that some linguists consider to be a re-emerging vocative case. It is used only for given names and nouns that end in -a and -я, which are sometimes dropped in the vocative form: "Лен, где ты?" ("Lena, where are you?"). It is basically equivalent to "Лена, где ты?" but suggests a positive personal and emotional bond between the speaker and the person being addressed. Names that end in -я then acquire a soft sign: "Оль!" = "Оля!" ("Olga!"). In addition to given names, the form is often used with words like "мама" (mom) and "папа" (dad), which would be respectively shortened to "мам" and "пап". The plural form is used with words such as "ребят", "девчат" (nom: "ребята", "девчата" guys, gals). Such usage differs from the historic vocative, which would be "Лено" and is not related. Serbo-Croatian Distinct vocatives exist only for singular masculine and feminine nouns. Nouns of the neuter gender and all nouns in plural have a vocative equal to the nominative. All vocative suffixes known from Old Church Slavonic also exist in Serbo-Croatian. The vocative in Serbo-Croatian is formed according to one of three types of declension, which are classes of nouns having equal declension suffixes. First declension The first declension comprises masculine nouns that end with a consonant. These have a vocative suffix of either -e (doktor: doktore "doctor") or -u (gospodar: gospodaru "master"). Nouns terminating in -or have the -e vocative suffix: (doktor: doktore "doctor", major: majore "major", majstor: majstore "artisan") also nouns possessing an unsteady a (vetar: vetre "wind", svekar: svekre "father-in-law") and the noun car: care "emperor". All other nouns in this class form the vocative with -u: gospodar: gospodaru "master", pastir: pastiru "shepherd", inženjer: inženjeru "engineer", pisar: pisaru "scribe", sekretar: sekretaru "secretary". In particular, masculine nouns ending with a palatal or prepalatal consonant j, lj, nj, č. dž. ć, đ. š form vocatives with the -u suffix: heroj: heroju "hero", prijatelj: prijatelju "friend", konj: konju "horse", vozač: vozaču "driver", mladić: mladiću "youngster", kočijaš: kočijašu "coachman", muž: mužu "husband". Nouns ending with the velars -k, -g and -h are palatalized to -č, -ž, -š in the vocative: vojnik: vojniče "soldier", drug: druže "comrade", duh: duše "ghost". A final -c becomes -č in the vocative: stric: striče "uncle", lovac: lovče "hunter". Likewise, a final -z