All Nordic languages: term common gender

[Joannes]

Hi,

The notion of 'common gender' recently came up in this thread in the Dutch forum. Although applicable to Standard Dutch, we don't have a term for masculine-or-feminine words (other than de-woorden, referring to the article they take). Anyway, it made Frank (and now me ) wonder where the notion of 'common gender' comes from, and I'm curious to find out what you call it yourselves in your beautiful yet incomprehensible tongues.

(I will then decide on which term to steal for Dutch. Erm, borrow, I mean borrow.)

Thank you in advance!

 

[Wilma_Sweden]

In terms of inflecting nouns, the Swedish language has two grammatical genders: utrum and neutrum. Utrum consists of nouns with en as the indefinite article ("en-words", while neutrum consists of nouns with ett as the indefinite article ("ett-words").

If there is a common gender, it would be utrum, because it consists of the past genders of maskulinum, femininum and reale - the masculine and feminine genders consisted of gender-specific nouns depicting human beings, i.e. using pronouns he or she - and they're all "en-words" anyway - while reale consisted of all other non-human "en-words".

I hope this makes some sense, although I'm not sure how it can be applied to Dutch grammar, as I don't know anything about it.

/Wilma

 

[Pteppic]

Well, since the question is directed at all Nordic languages, I can only say that in Norwegian we still have three genera, and thus no common gender (the same goes for Icelandic and Faroese).

 

[Lingvisten]

Danish has utrum and neutrum, or fælleskøn and intetkøn. The utrum form is the old feminine form, and only in some dialects is the maskuline still present. nouns who once was maskuline took the feminine form and became utrum.

 

[Pteppic]

Danish has utrum and neutrum, or fælleskøn and intetkøn. The utrum form is the old feminine form, and only in some dialects is the maskuline still present. nouns who once was maskuline took the feminine form and became utrum.

Really? What was the old masculine form?

 

[Joannes]

Thank you all for your answers!

Apparently, in Swedish you could also call the utrum gender 'gemensamt genus'.

, or fælleskøn and intetkøn.

Of which the latter literally means something like 'no-gender' or 'ungendered', right? What would be a literal translation of the former, i.e. what does fælles mean?

 

[Lingvisten]

Really? What was the old masculine form?

This is an example from www.dialekt.dk, taken from "Sjællandske lov":

Hankøn: thrællin, hæstin, domin (trællen, hesten, dommen)
Hunkøn: kunæn, næsæn (konen, næsen)
Intetkøn: barnæt, øræt, skipit (barnet, øret, skibet)

What would be a literal translation of the former, i.e. what does fælles mean?

"fælles" literally means common.

 

[Joannes]

"fælles" literally means common.

That's what I wanted to know. Thanks again!