Re: Feminization of plurals?

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
[snip]
> It has happened exactly the same in standard
> Swedish and Danish.  The masculine forms of
> the articles and demonstrative pronouns have
> totally ousted the feminine forms, and the
> personal pronouns are now used only for
> animates.  Grammars talk about four genders,
> viz. neuter, common, masculine and feminine,
> but in reality the last three differ only in
> which personal pronoun they take.
In Swedish, there's also a slight difference in adjectival agreement,
with masculines taking _-e_ in the weak form where feminines and
commons (and neuters) take _-a_, eg. _den store mannen_ "the great
man" v. _den stora kvinnan_ "the great woman". Now, I wouldn't be
surprised if this disappears from the written standard soon enough,
but it's still mostly adhered to in writing.

(In speech, you'll find people who have -a everywhere, ones who have
-e everywhere, ones that make the distinction much as in the written
standard (I do), and ones who draw some other distinction.)

--
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?

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