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In Sixto-Clementine Vulgate we find in Genesis this verse:

poenituit eum quod hominum fecisset in terra (Genesis 6:6)

"hominum" is in the genetive case which I find strange. I try searching for the instances where genetive case would be used after verb, and it seems to be related mainly to remember/forgetting verbs.

So I wonder if that's a general practice or I'm missing something in my analysis of the verse.

(by the way, other translations indeed use the accusative case (sometime in singular) in this verse).

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hominum is a post-classical (or if you prefer: erroneous) spelling for hominem (acc. sing.).

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  • Thanks. is that kind of a general tendency, or just for specific words?
    – d_e
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 11:21
  • Vegliot yomno seems to imply hominum.
    – fdb
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 11:51
  • I don't understand what "Vegliot yomno" stands for ?
    – d_e
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 12:03
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    @d_e. Vegliot was an extinct Romance language spoken on the island of Veglio in the Adriatic. The Vegliot word for "man" in "yomno", which seems to derive from Vulgar Latin "hominum", not "hominem".
    – fdb
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 12:40
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    @d_e To clarify a bit further: nouns in Romance languages are almost always derived from the accusative singular of the Latin nouns. We'd expect yomno to come from Vulgar Latin hominum, and something like *yomne from Vulgar Latin hominem; yomno is the one that we see, which implies that people were using hominum as the accusative.
    – Draconis ♦
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 16:19

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