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Masculine and feminine have merged into 'common'/'utrum', used mostly for animate objects as pointed out by a sibling comment, although not all animate objects
by blompa 7y ago
Masculine and feminine have merged into 'common'/'utrum', used mostly for animate objects as pointed out by a sibling comment, although not all animate objects (e.g. barn, lejon).
Neuter has stayed as is.
There are, however, remnants of the masculine/feminine distinction left: e.g. klockan is ofter referred to as feminine (hon), and the "-e" in "storebror" (as opposed to "-a" which is used for utrum today and feminine in the past).
- einr 7y agoThere are, however, remnants of the masculine/feminine distinction left: e.g. klockan is ofter referred to as feminine (hon), and the "-e" in "storebror" (as opposed to "-a" which is used for utrum today and feminine in the past). The -e/-a ending is still in common use not only in constructions like "storebror" but in general in adjectives pointing to a female or male person ("den fule mannen", "den fula kvinnan") although this usage is falling out of favour a bit ("den fula mannen" would not generally sound wrong to most modern speakers) Another interesting remnant of old Norse that still lingers in modern Swedish is the accusative case ending -s in expressions like "till fjälls", "till skogs", "till sjöss", "till sängs" etc.