Oblique case

In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated obl; from Latin: casus obliquus) or objective case (abbr. obj) is a special form of a noun or pronoun that is used in certain ways in a sentence. It is different from the nominative case, which is used for the subject of a sentence, and sometimes also different from the vocative, used when calling someone.

A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can be used in many places in a sentence, but not as the subject. For example, in English, the word "him" is an oblique form of "he," and "them" is an oblique form of "they." The term objective case is often used today instead of the older terms dative and accusative from Old English.

The idea of an oblique case is also important in languages that do not have a nominative case, like some ergative–absolutive languages. In these languages, the oblique case helps show different roles in the sentence, such as who is doing the action or to whom the action is happening.

Hindustani

Main article: Hindustani declension

In Hindustani, which includes both Hindi and Urdu, nouns, pronouns, and postpositions can change form to show their role in a sentence using special endings called the oblique case. This case helps to show how words relate to each other, similar to how the vocative case is used in some languages. You can see some examples of how this works in the tables below:

Bulgarian

Bulgarian is a Slavic language that uses an oblique case for pronouns. For example, when saying "Give that ball to me", the phrase in Bulgarian is "дай тaзи топка на мен" (day tazi topka na men). This way of speaking comes from older systems in proto-Slavic and shows remnants of other ways to speak, like the vocative case used when calling someone directly.

English

The objective case is used with special kinds of pronouns in English, and these are often called object pronouns. They help show different jobs these pronouns can do in a sentence that they couldn’t do if the sentence used a different kind of pronoun.

For example, the pronoun me can be used in several ways:

• As the main person or thing being acted on, like in “Do you see me?” or “The army sent me to Korea.”
• As a person or thing that receives something, like in “Kim passed the pancakes to me.”
• After a preposition, like in “That picture of me was blurry.”
• To show who or what something is, like in “This is me on the beach.”
• When saying who or what something is, like in “It’s me again.”

The pronoun me looks the same in all these jobs, except when showing ownership or when being the subject of a sentence. Sometimes, people use me in funny or casual ways, like “Me so hungry.”

French

Old French had two special ways to change the endings of words: the cas sujet and the cas régime. Over time, these two ways mostly became the same in today’s French.

For example, take the word “conte,” which means “count” or “earl”:

• In Old French:
  • Nominative: li cuens (single), li conte (more than one)
  • Oblique: le conte (single), les contes (more than one)
• In Modern French:
  • le conte (single), les contes (more than one)

Sometimes, both old ways of changing the word still exist but now mean different things. For example, the word copain today means “friend,” while compagnon means “companion.” In Old French, these were just different endings of the same word.

Kurdish

Kurdish uses a special form called the oblique case for pronouns, objects, and for things that are connected through izafe constructions. This helps show that these words are not the main subject of a sentence.

The oblique case is used in many places to show relationships between words, making the meaning clearer.