all case endings, like most other Romance languages. However, with feminine proper names the role of the vocative is played by the absence of the determiner: the personal article ła / l' usually precedes feminine names in other situations, even in predicates. Masculine names and other nouns lack articles and so rely on prosody to mark forms of address: Predicative constructions: Arabic Properly speaking, Arabic has only three cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. However, a meaning similar to that conveyed by the vocative case in other languages is indicated by the use of the particle yā () placed before a noun inflected in the nominative case (or accusative if the noun is in construct form). In English translations, it is often translated literally as O instead of being omitted. A longer form used in Classical Arabic is (masculine), (feminine), sometimes combined with yā. The particle yā was also used in the old Castilian language, because of Arabic influence via Mozarabic immigrations. Mandarin Mandarin uses no special inflected forms for address. However, special forms and morphemes (that are not inflections) exist for addressing. Mandarin has several particles that can be attached to the word of address to mark certain special vocative forces, where appropriate. A common one is a, attached to the end of the address word. For example, rìjì "diary" becomes rìjì'a. Certain specialized vocative morphemes also exist, albeit with limited applicabilities. For instance, the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, to express strong feelings (especially negative ones) to someone, a neutral tone suffix -ei may be attached to certain address words. It is most commonly applied to the word (sūnzi, "grandson"), to form sūnzei, meaning approximately "Hey you nasty one!". Another example is (xiǎozi, lit. "kid; young one"), resulting in xiǎozei "Hey kiddo!". Japanese The vocative case is present in Japanese as the particle よ. This usage is often literary or poetic. For example: In conversational Japanese, this same particle is often used at the end of a sentence to indicate assertiveness, certainty or emphasis. Georgian In Georgian, the vocative case is used to address the second-person singular and plural. For word roots that end with a consonant, the vocative case suffix is -o, and for the words that end with a vowel, it is -v like in Old Georgian, but for some words, it is considered archaic. For example, kats- is the root for the word "man". If one