Re: Numerals Re: Re: Agglutinating -> inflecting

Quoting Markus Miekk-oja <fam.miekk-oja@...>:

> >You can say things like _två öl_ "two beer" in Swedish too, BTW.
> Sweden's
> >supposed not to have pub culture. With measurement units we cheat,
> since
> they
> >typically have zero plurals! This even happens to innocent normal
> nouns
> when
> <they get press-ganged into unit service. Eg, _man_ "man" normally
> pluralizes
> as _män_, but has zero plural when used as unit of army strength or
> labor
> force.
>
> Also, öl change gender when discussing "unit of beer" or "kind of beer",
> as
> do some other words too.
> _man_ also pluralizes as _mannar_ in some contexts, tho' I can't think
> of
> any. (A vocative form when the unit of army strenght is being
> adressed?)
In my 'lect, _mannar_ is the pl of _man_ when it means something
like "underling". An officer's soldiers are his _mannar_, f'rinstance. It
would sound strange, to my ears, to use it as a vocative.

I think German _Mannen_ has a similar distribution. Native Germanophones?

                                                         Andreas

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