Danish: fem personer af personalet / tyve litteraturer

[Ludwig Lukasiewicz]

It says in the DDO that "personale" means "(samtlige) ansatte på en arbejdsplads" and it is used "især i singularis", so grammatically I cannot say "*Der kommer fem personaler." But anyway I want to convey the meaning. What is the word for a number of persons of a "personale"?

The similar for the word litteratur, I cannot say "*Jeg har tyve litteraturer", but I feel I need to convey my meaning in some way. So, if I have some items, some of them are books, some of them are bound documents, some of them are news papers, some of them are PDF. I have twenty of them, but I don't know how many of each. I just want to say I have 20. How should I express?

 

[serbianfan]

Well, I know Norwegian better than Danish, but I'm pretty sure it's the same in Danish. I would say "Der kommer fem ansatte". You could say "fem medlemmer af personalet" but that would be less common. For the "literature" question, I would say "jeg har tyve tekster", or maybe if I was doing research "20 skrevne kilder".

 

[bicontinental]

I agree with serbianfan...personale is a collective noun and individuals are referred to as ansatte or personalemedlemmer (or maybe less commonly medlemmer af personalet.)
It's more difficult with collective nouns like litteratur, læsestof, læsemateriale which may include a variety of reading materials. I think most people would say that they have "some literature" and if they need to further express it numerically, they would mention what they have, (X tidsskrifter, Y aviser, Z artikler, romaner, faglige tekster, skriftlige dokumenter etc.)

 

[Sepia]

I aggree totally with Serbianfan. They are uncountable words. You might also say, "jeg har tyve bøger og artikler" or whatever it is that you have.