Vocative

[0stsee]

I don't know on what it depends, but it's not gender. Vocative can have multiple variants, but in general most words have form which is equal to nominative (except for musculine nouns ending with -s or -is), so you can get by without knowing vocative

Kaa jaasauc kaada ar vaardu "Liiga"?
How are you supposed to call someone with the name "Liiga"?

Liiga!
vai
Liig!
vai
Liigu!

[Sol Invictus]

I don't know on what it depends, but it's not gender. Vocative can have multiple variants, but in general most words have form which is equal to nominative (except for musculine nouns ending with -s or -is), so you can get by without knowing vocative

Kaa jaasauc kaada ar vaardu "Liiga"?
How are you supposed to call someone with the name "Liiga"?

Liiga!
vai
Liig!
vai
Liigu!

I think no one would say Līg! I think you can safely call women by nominative and men by droping -s

[0stsee]

Okej. Paldies!

[Łukasz]

Tas ir interesants.

Can you always use the nominative forms for all words that end in a or e (māsa!, māte!, etc.)? Would you ever use the forms mās!, māt!, etc.? These latter ones I found as alternatives to the first ones in an old book (1966), so I'm wondering if the language has changed with respects to the vocative.

What form would an adjective be in in the vocative?

[0stsee]

Tas ir interesants.

Can you always use the nominative forms for all words that end in a or e (māsa!, māte!, etc.)? Would you ever use the forms mās!, māt!, etc.? These latter ones I found as alternatives to the first ones in an old book (1966), so I'm wondering if the language has changed with respects to the vocative.

What form would an adjective be in in the vocative?

Tas ir interesanti. (Don't ask me why. They just say that instead of "interesants".)

My Latvian friends told me there was just a simple rule when it came to vocative:
Male names drop their final -S, and female names stay the same.

HTH!


Marks (in vocative "Mark" )

[Sol Invictus]

Tas ir interesants.

Can you always use the nominative forms for all words that end in a or e (māsa!, māte!, etc.)? Would you ever use the forms mās!, māt!, etc.? These latter ones I found as alternatives to the first ones in an old book (1966), so I'm wondering if the language has changed with respects to the vocative.

What form would an adjective be in in the vocative?

Tas ir interesanti. (Don't ask me why. They just say that instead of "interesants".)

My Latvian friends told me there was just a simple rule when it came to vocative:
Male names drop their final -S, and female names stay the same.

HTH!


Marks (in vocative "Mark" )

Because we need to know what exactly is interesting to use adjective.
I told you that in this thread BTW, because different forms depend on feeling and are not explained anywhere I've ever looked (and as a matter of fact many books suggest that you don't drop -s in first declinition, which in many cases would sound awkward in real life), IMHO -u sounds sweeter and frendlier, while endings get dropped when word gets longer, I almost never use māt! and mās! (for reasons not related to language) and I'm not sure if I would, but I would say, for example, māsīc! or vecmāmiņ! Only definite adjectives have vocative and it ends with -o

[mak]

I think it's a personal preference. For example, I and my mother call my cousin Katrīn! but her parents and sister call her Katrīna!

[hekate]

Māt! is a well-known form, actually I would say it is the most correct form in the written language. In reality, this form you will see in literature, because nowadays almost nobody says to his/her mother "māt".

We would use forms of the word "mamma": mamm! mamma! mammu!
(as mentioned above, personal preferences)

Anyway, I would also say that the general rule for vocative is to drop the -s for masc. and to use the nominative form for fem. Maybe a tendence is to drop the -a for fem. word, when they have more than 2 syllabs, especially when they are in diminutive.
f.e.
Māsa! Māsiņ!
Meitiņ! Saulīt!