mark of unrefined speech by the majority of city-dwellers, who refrain from its usage. The forms of the vocative are as follows. (Note that the vocative does not have both definite and indefinite forms. The following rules are to be applied for the indefinite form of the nouns): Singular feminine nouns and proper names ending in an unstressed -ă/-a take the ending -o e.g. → ('girl!'). Some popular plurals are different, though: → ! ('Mary!'). Singular feminine nouns ending in an unstressed -e take the ending -eo e.g. → ! ('bridge!'). Sometimes, the e is dropped altogether. Singular feminine nouns ending in a stressed -a take the ending -auo e.g. → ! ('stick!'). Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in a consonant take the ending -ule e.g. → ! ('boy!'). The vocative for animate nouns is sometimes formed as if the noun were a proper name: → ! (see below). Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in unstressed -e/-ă take no extra ending (-Ø) e.g. → ! ('brother!'). Masculine proper names take the ending -e e.g. → ! ('Stephen!'). Some words also experience some change in their vowels ( → ! 'John!'). All plural nouns take the ending -lor e.g. → ! ('apples!'). Here are some examples of nouns completely inflected. Articles Definite article An often cited peculiarity of Romanian, which it shares with Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian, is that, unlike all other Romance languages, the definite articles are attached to the end of the noun as enclitics (as in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, and North Germanic languages) instead of being placed in front. These enclitic definite articles are believed to have been formed, as in other Romance languages, from Latin demonstrative pronouns. The table below shows the generally accepted etymology of the Romanian definite article. Examples: Masculine nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): – ('forest' – 'the forest'); – ('tree' – 'the tree'); – ('brother' – 'the brother'); – ('father' – 'the father'). Neuter nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): – ('theater' – 'the theater'); – ('place' – 'the place'); Feminine nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): casă – casa (house – the house); floare – floarea (flower – the flower); cutie – cutia (box – the box); stea – steaua (star – the star); Indefinite article The Romanian indefinite article, unlike the definite article, is placed before the noun, and has likewise derived from Latin: (The Latin phrase nescio quid means "I don't know what".) Nouns in the