Wednesday 12 October 2016

honorifics - How to invoke God/spirits in Japanese


No, this is not about any Buddhist chant or mantra that can be used to call forth Japanese gods or heavenly spirits, but rather about any specialized words or interjections that attract attention of the God/spirits that we want to communicate with. Similar to the following equivalent interjections in some languages I know:



English: 'O'
e.g: O The Great God


Arabic: 'يا' (pronunciation: Ya)
e.g: ياربي



Malay/Indonesian: 'Wahai'
e.g: Wahai Tuhanku



Does Japanese have such words/interjections? Even though 神様へ might be serving the purpose, へ lacks the glorification that 'O' has. Note that 'O', 'يا' and 'Wahai' are not restricted to God/spirits/heavenly beings only since they can also be used towards people, for example in a sermon, so the Japanese equivalent(s) must also have to have similar scope in order to qualify.



Answer



It sounds like you are looking for the vocative case particle in Japanese.


Taken from wikipedia's article on vocative case:



In archaic Japanese, or when written as verse, a particle and may be affixed.




少年、大志を抱け (Boys, be ambitious, quote by William S. Clark)


、汝の誉れはその御名のごとく (O God, Thy praise is according to Thine name, from Bach's cantata)


じいさま、山さ雨は降っただけ (Old man, was it raining on the mountain?)




The article however notes that this is archaic, and usually vocative case in Japanese is formed with null morpheme, i.e. without any specific particle.


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