Question
Aggiornato il
5 ott 2022
- Inglese (Stati Uniti)
-
Norvegese (Bokmal)
Domande Norvegese (Bokmal)
Is there a way to figure out if a word in Norwegian (Bokmål) is masculine, feminine, or neutral? Feel free to also give examples. Thanks!
Is there a way to figure out if a word in Norwegian (Bokmål) is masculine, feminine, or neutral? Feel free to also give examples. Thanks!
Risposte
Leggi ulteriori commenti
- Norvegese (Bokmal)
- Norvegese (Nynorsk)
There are a few patterns, but you usually cannot be reasonably sure of the gender of an unfamiliar noun in isolation. Often it's clear in that articles and inflections depend on gender. But even natives will occasionally need to look up the gender of words (in my experience this is mostly in the case of words I merely use rarely, as words which aren't in my active vocabulary at all usually won't be ones I need to use anyway).
There are also some murkiness in that, for instance, certain words can have multiple genders, either dependent on pronunciation and/or usage or in a situation where they exist in free variation or where there are regional differences. And it's important to note that many speakers don't make a distinction between the masculine and feminine genders. And some only sometimes do.
So, to start with, let's go through the most obvious potential indicator of gender: articles.
en, én: masculine (considerably more likely), feminine
ei: feminine
et, ett, det: neuter
den, denne: masculine (marginally more likely), feminine
det, dette: neuter or generic (i.e. it may be used as a dummy, as in "Det regner." (It is raining.)).
Plural articles/pronouns (such as "de", "dem" & "disse") don't indicate gender at all.
Then there are the inflections. Here is a general picture of the different forms of nouns:
en gutt, gutten, gutter, gutta/guttene
ei/en jente, jenta/jenten, jenter, jentene
et barn, barnet, barn, barna/barnene
Perhaps the most notable thing here is that, as you can see, the neuter plural indefinite usually received no suffix. But there are exceptions: Some words have the -er suffix (e.g. et sted, stedet, steder, stedene) and some allow for either approach (e.g. et minutt, minuttet, minutt(er), minuttene).
Other aspects to be wary of include:
1) Only some masculine and neuter nouns can get the -a suffix.
2) For masculine nouns the -a suffix indicates the definite plural, while for feminine ones it marks the definite singular.
Then there's the messy world of trying to determine the gender simply by the stem in isolation. Certain clear-cut principles exist. E.g. a compound word is always the same gender as the head. So if you were to know "krone" to be feminine, you would also know "lysekrone" is too. Another pattern is that where applicable, the grammatical gender tends to correspond to biological gender (e.g. "sønn" (son) is masculine and "datter" (daughter) is feminine).
General words which may refer to either gender are not quite as consistent with the masculine and neuter both being common, with e.g. beboer (occupant), borger (citizen), person (person) & skapning (being) are masculine and individ (individual), krek (critter), menneske (human) & vesen (creature) neuter.
More specific words referring to people are typically masculine. E.g. gamling (old person), tenåring (teenager), ungdom (youth), unge (kid), praktikant (intern), sjef (boss), kjekkas (handsome person), skjønnhet (beauty), løgner (liar), leser (reader), fange (prisoner) & kujon (coward). This also applies to nouns referencing professions, such as atlet (athlete), elektriker (electrician), forfatter (author), forsker (scientist), ingeniør (engineer), journalist (journalist), komiker (comedian), lege (doctor), lærer (teacher), maler (painter), professor (professor), sveiser (welder) & tolk (interpreter).
One trend I don’t have any ultimate proof of, but which I think there is a lot to is that two-syllable words ending in unstressed E are typically feminine. Out of the first twenty that came to my mind, 15 were feminine, 4 were masculine and 1 was neuter. Here they are:
Feminine:
bluse
dukke
fille
fitte
flaske
kanne
kasse
klokke
messe
panne
ramme
truse
veske
vifte
væske
Masculine:
flamme
pinne
time
vase
Neuter:
sikte
Words for animals are all over the place. A few have male/female forms to some degree; like the simple okse/ku (bull/cow) and hane/høne (rooster/hen), which follow the male equals masculine / female equals feminine principle; and complex ones like katt/katte, wherein the former is only usually male and the latter only usually female. And as for “hund” and “bikkje”, both meaning “dog”, the former is masculine and the latter feminine, though there is not really any distinction made in terms of using one in reference to the sex of the dog. Another set of words are gris (pig, masculine) / svin (swine, neuter) and purke/sugge (female pig, both feminine). Here are some other words for animals:
Masculine:
bille (beetle)
bjørn (bear)
elg (elk)
falk (falcon)
fisk (fish)
fugl (bird)
gribb (vulture)
hai (shark)
hest (horse)
hval (whale)
karpe (carp)
kondor (condor)
ravn (raven)
sau (sheep)
snegle (snail)
ulv (wolf)
Feminine:
flue (fly)
gaupe (lynx)
geit (goat)
kråke (crow)
lus (louse)
mus (mouse)
måke (gull)
øgle (lizard)
Neuter:
insekt (insect)
Let’s finish off with another pattern I sense is fairly strong. It’s that long words, rare words and especially loanwords are usually masculine (and especially rarely feminine). I’m very confident about this when it comes to recent loanwords, but for other words it may be more of a shot in the dark. To continue the animal theme, here are some more advanced animal names, all of which are masculine:
gorilla (gorilla)
papegøye (parrot)
parakitt (parakeet)
sjiraff (giraffe)
terrier (terrier)
tordivel (dor)
undulat (budgerigar)
Beyond these ultimately fairly specific patterns, there are no major clues you could use to tell a noun's gender. But it is possible to build up an intuition based on vague – or highly specific – clues. E.g. words with similar meanings, origins, suffixes etc. are more likely to have the same gender.
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