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In German it was customary to decline Latin words used in German prose. One might, for instance, speak of performing a reductionem ad absurdum, using the the accusative form of the word reductio when it has the function of the direct object.

Are there any (relatively recent) examples of this in English litterature?

Toothrot
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  • When was it customary to do this in German? – tchrist Aug 31 '15 at 14:06
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    I have never once heard anyone perform a reductionem in German. It's always reductio. But that is really beside the point seeing how Modern English does not even have a dedicated accusative form for nouns, so it is exceptionally unlikely that any English speaker would even think of creating such a thing. If you perform a dance, never a dancen, then you perform a reductio, never a reductionem. – RegDwigнt Aug 31 '15 at 14:06
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    @RegDwigнt I think you are not doing this question justice. Perhaps Laurentius knows more about 12th-century German than you do? You didn't even ask which period he was thinking of. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Aug 31 '15 at 14:12
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    "Once a word has been borrowed into a language, it adheres to the grammar for normal words in that language." Or can you tell me what the instrumental case of perestroika is? – RegDwigнt Aug 31 '15 at 14:19
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    There are no such phenomena in English. For one thing, unlike German, English has no case system. its speakers are unused to declension or even inflection and don't recognize it when they encounter it; hence they never imitate it. – John Lawler Aug 31 '15 at 14:19
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    @JohnLawler: For one thing, English did have cases in the past. Laurentius is taking about past usage, not modern usage. Secondly, one may use cases from another language in one's own even if the latter has no cases, if only to show off or to satisfy an OCD urge. In Dutch, which has no real cases, it is at least done jocularly by many people today, but it is probably also done seriously by a few, which is of course why people unlike Laurentius ask such questions about modern English/Dutch. I don't know, but it is quite conceivable that there should be relatively recent examples too. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Aug 31 '15 at 14:24
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    Someone might have tried it as a jest in the Spectator or in a coffeehouse once. But more recently, probly only in Latin classes, of which there are few any more. – John Lawler Aug 31 '15 at 14:28
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    I can find a jocular example of anything in any language. But my understanding is that this question is interested in finding out if this is done systematically and for reasons other than lulz. With that in mind, I would like to maintain the answer is "no, people do not do this in English" rather than "yes, people do this in Dutch". – RegDwigнt Aug 31 '15 at 14:32
  • I think the closest we get is foreign pluralization (indices, schemata, seraphim, bureaux), though many of those are regularizing (indexes, schemas, seraphs, bureaus). Some may affect foreign nominative pluralizations (e.g. Toyota Prii) to be clever or pompous, myself included, but I could not turn up any examples of case-inflected forms of common phrases— no He offered his bonam fidem, no I gave my magnum operi a final look, no The sky shimmered with the aurora boreali. – choster Aug 31 '15 at 16:08
  • Some people decline to use Latin nouns in English prose, if only to eschew obfuscation... – Ex Umbris Sep 01 '15 at 01:40
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    @tchrist: It was definitely common in the 15th century (example) and it’s still done today with some proper names in liturgical German (in particular Catholic), e.g., Mariä* Empfängnis, Herz Jesu, Leib Christi* – see also here. – Wrzlprmft Sep 01 '15 at 05:59
  • @RegDwigнt As with Dutch, at least partial declension of Latin nouns was also common in scholarly or religious works up until at least the 18th, perhaps even 19th, century in Nordic languages, which (apart from Icelandic) do not have cases except for pronouns either. I'm not sure how systematic it was, but it was definitely common enough. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 01 '15 at 07:31
  • At least in Britain, in the old days the sort of highly-educated people who were likely to talk about a reductio ad absurdum at all were very likely to have had a classical education. Thus it would have come more naturally to them to decline the Latin words if appropriate, if only to show off their erudition! I'm sure I've seen this done in works dating from the as recently as the early twentieth century. – Lostinfrance Sep 01 '15 at 11:24
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    @Lostinfrance: It would be wonderful if you found an example. – Toothrot Sep 01 '15 at 12:14

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You can still find Jesu, the vocative of Jesus in hymns and probably other liturgical texts (Wiktionary on this). Some examples (all are titles):

Wrzlprmft
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  • And that's one that I've heard is still used in Modern German as well. Is there a traditional Anglicised pronunciation of this, along the lines of /ˈdʒizju/ or something? When I see the word "Jesu," it looks foreign, so my first instinct is to try to pronounce it in church-Latin instead like /jesu/. But in that case, it's not clear that it really forms a pair with "Jesus" for me. – herisson Sep 01 '15 at 06:50
  • @sumelic: Is there a traditional Anglicised pronunciation of this – I have no idea and, going by what I can find on the Internet, neither do most of the people who sings those songs. – Wrzlprmft Sep 01 '15 at 06:59
  • @sumelic Jesu is used in several other languages as well—in the Nordic languages (and I'm guessing in German as well), it's also the genitive. The full genitive of Jesus Kristus is Jesu Kristi. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 01 '15 at 07:27
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reductionem ad absurdum, using the accusative form of the word reductio when it has the function of the direct object. Are there any (relatively recent) examples of this in English literature?

If you want a quantitative answer regarding 'reductio ad absurdum' then I refer you to Google Books.

Google ngram: reductionem ad absurdum,reductio ad absurdum

You can see that there is not a single instance using the accusative case.

If you want a general answer with regard to all possible Latin expressions then that is a research project. You may wish to try specific ones that you have in mind by using ngram yourself.

chasly - supports Monica
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