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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Re: Dutch gender
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Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 18:14:17 GMT
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Daniel von Brighoff wrote:

> In article <32F1BCFD.311C@natlab.research.philips.com>,
> Lenderink, dr. E. <lenderin@natlab.research.philips.com> wrote:

> >This remark is completely wrong. ALL Dutch dialects retain the
> >distinction DE for masculine/feminine gender and HET for neuter.
> >Actually, there are a few Ducth dialects that retain even more gender
> >distinctions: DEN for masculine and DE for feminine. (Some of the
> >dialects spoken close to the Dutch-German border.)

> I'm just going by what I read on this newsgroup a few months ago.  A
> Belgian posted, complaining that Dutch dictionaries no longer listed
> gender in the noun entries and more than one poster replied that the
> distinction was dead in some northern Netherlandic dialects.  Not being
> one myself, I'd like to hear what Netherlandic speakers have to say to
> this.

I remember that posting.  The Belgian was complaining that Dutch
dictionaries no longer distinguished *masculine* and *feminine* gender,
merging them into common gender. As Lenderink says, this is
characteristic
of Standard Dutch, though apparently not of the complainer's dialect.

The common/neuter distinction, however, remains strong in all dialects
of Dutch AFAIK.

(Interesting that Dutch and North Germanic have -- independently? --
converged on common/neuter; does Low German do the same?)

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
