Here’s one for you. I have a bilingual bible that I use for church so I can better understand what’s being talked about. I understand that the fact that it’s the Bible means it’s probably written in some kind of classical Japanese, but there is one thing that comes up all the time that I can’t get my head around; the particle よ, but not used as a sentence-ending particle as in the N% grammar point. I’ll give you a couple of examples:
主よ (noun plus よ)
見よ (verb stem plus よ)
What do we think?
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I think when I’ve seen よ it’s been in the context of calling out to someone or get someone’s attention. And looking it up you get:
主よ 私のたましいは，あなたを仰いでいます．To you, O LORD I lift up my soul.
Calling out to god
見よ, 勇者は帰る See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes.
Calling out to people to look at the returning hero
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I would agree 100% with this. よ is used very often in this way. The persona/shin-megami tensei games have it all the time. It is just a way of dramatizing what you are saying (usually in a pious way).
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I see, yeah that’s really understandable. Thanks!
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Do you young people not say 御機嫌よう、我が友よ anymore when you meet up for drinks 
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I feel like ghetto slang has adopted “yo” from Japanese. Listen to Eminem for example… every time he lays down the facts or a strong opinion he expresses it with YO. It’s easy, yo. Yo means yo, yo.
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