Hogwart's Motto, help!

[rcraigharman at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21299

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., blpurdom at y... wrote:
> When some of the spells are done, such as "Imperio!" and "Crucio!" 
> the form that these are taking is called the VOCATIVE, which means
> a command is being given.  The endings you mention are not
> "traditional," they in fact have very specific meanings.

Actually, this isn't correct.

The command form of verbs is the imperative.  The Latin imperative
(which is a mood) has two tenses (present and future) and two voices
(active and passive), with 2d and 3d person singular and plural
forms in the future, and only 2d person forms in the present.

However, neither "imperio" nor "crucio" is an imperative in Latin.
"Crucio", which is an actual Latin verb (crucio, cruciare, cruciavi,
cruciatus), is in the first person singular present indicative
active = "I crucify".  As a present active imperative, it would be
"cruci" in the singular, and "crucite" in the plural.

"Imperio", in contrast, is the ablative or dative of the noun
"imperium" = "an order".  The vocative of "imperium" is simply
"imperium", as neuter nouns do not change between the nominative
and the vocative.  [The corresponding verb is "imperare", with
present imperative forms of "impera" and "imperate".]

By way of correction: the vocative is not a command, nor does it
signify necessarily that a command is being given.  The vocative is
simply the form used to address someone (or occasionally something).
For most nouns, it is identical to the nominative, except in the
2d declension for masculine nouns, in which case, "-e" is added to
the genitive stem.  E.g. servus --> serve = "Slave!", dominus -->
domine = "O Lord!", etc.

All this being said, I think that JKR probably knows a reasonable
amount of Latin AND chose deliberately to vary the endings, as these
are *spells*.   When everything else in the books seems to indicate
great attention to detail and much research and thought, it is
unreasonable that she would be consistently careless here....

....Craig