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From: hsbrand@cs.vu.nl (HS Brandsma)
Subject: Re: Swedish genders
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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 11:01:48 GMT
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Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se) wrote:
: Magnus Olsson (mol@marvin.df.lth.se) writes:
: >A related question is: How many genders are there in Swedish? You
: >could answer four (masculine, feminine, neuter, real) or two (real and
: >utrum).  The first answer is based on history: there used to be a
: >sharp distinction, and even non-animate objects could be feminine or
: >masculaine (just as in German or French). The second answer is based
: >on current usage: the endings of masculine, feminine and real nouns
: >are identical, at least as long as we're talking about non-animates,
: >and nobody thinks of non-animate objects as having a gender when
: >speaking modern Swedish. 

: ...or you could say that there are three genders: mascluine, feminine
: and neuter. Of these the masculine gender is very small and comprises
: only living males. Things (and most animals) are either feminine or
: neuter.

: The rational for this distinction is that adjectives are inflected
: differently for masculine in the weak inflection and takes -e instead
: of -a as for feminine, neuter and plural. Actually you can use -a
: with masculine words too without sounding very funny, and thus you
: can be gender netural by saying "den glada bagaren" (the happy baker).
: However, when you drop the noun you are out of luck. Which baker are
: you talking about? "Den glade". "Den glada" would have implied a
: female baker.

: On the other hand, except for the personal and possesive pronoun there
: is no difference whatsoever between words that denote living females
: and non-neuter words that denote things or animals. 


Just curious: What is this "real" gender in Swedish. I know some
Danish and there they only have 2 genders, common and neuter.
Can anybody give some examples and the historical origin of this
fourth gender ? Does Norwegian have it too?

Henno Brandsma

