# Norwegian: Plural of indefinite neuter nouns



## Absu

Hello 

I have a question regarding the plural of indefinite neuter nouns. I've noticed some neuter nouns don't append the -er when indefinite plural, such as _år_, but others do_._ I assume it's done case-by-case.

What prompted me to ask was I was trying to translate: 

"I have music from fifty-three countries."

And I originally wrote:

"Jeg har musikk fra femtitre lander."

When I pasted it into Google Translate, it came back with "lands" instead of "countries". When I removed the -er, it changed "lands" to "countries". I understand Google Translate is far from perfect, and I avoid when I can, but I do still use it as a reference. Is it correct or am I correct?

I'm just wondering if some neuter nouns don't append the -er in their indefinite plural form.

Thank you for your time.


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## oskhen

Absu said:


> Hello
> 
> I have a question regarding the plural of indefinite neuter nouns. I've noticed some neuter nouns don't append the -er when indefinite plural, such as _år_, but others do_._ I assume it's done case-by-case.
> 
> What prompted me to ask was I was trying to translate:
> 
> "I have music from fifty-three countries."
> 
> And I originally wrote:
> 
> "Jeg har musikk fra femtitre lander."
> 
> When I pasted it into Google Translate, it came back with "lands" instead of "countries". When I removed the -er, it changed "lands" to "countries". I understand Google Translate is far from perfect, and I avoid when I can, but I do still use it as a reference. Is it correct or am I correct?
> 
> I'm just wondering if some neuter nouns don't append the -er in their indefinite plural form.
> 
> Thank you for your time.



The general rule is that the indefinite plural of neuter nouns don't have the suffix -er or any other, but is is identical in form to the indefinite singular (ett hus, flere hus). There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any right now.

Indefinite plural of "land" ("land"/"country") is "land". 

"Lander" would be present tense of the verb "å lande", meaning "to land" (concerning flying things, at least). That might be the source of your, or Google Translate's, confusion.


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## Tjahzi

Interesting to hear.

Swedish, too, has _-Ø _(also known as "zero suffix" or "empty suffix") for indefinite neuter plural. Interestingly enough, _land_, is irregular, having the plural form _länder _(which happens to be identical to German _Land - Länder_).

However, and this is my question, Swedish has a few subgroups, of which neuter nouns ending in a vowel is the most common. These nouns take the suffix _-n_ as their plural ending (_ett äpple - två äpplen)_. Does Norwegian have this subgroup as well? And does it behave the same way?


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## kirsitn

Tjahzi said:


> However, and this is my question, Swedish has a few subgroups, of which neuter nouns ending in a vowel is the most common. These nouns take the suffix _-n_ as their plural ending (_ett äpple - två äpplen)_. Does Norwegian have this subgroup as well? And does it behave the same way?



Yes. _Et eple - to epler_.

In addition to this, we have some neuter nouns from Latin, which are supposed to be conjugated the same way as in Latin (_et forum - to fora_), but I believe they tend to be conjugated in the standard way by most people (_et forum - to forum_).


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## Magb

kirsitn said:


> Yes. _Et eple - to epler_.



That isn't quite the same thing though. The Swedish -n plurals constitute a unique declension that to my knowledge has no parallel in any other North Germanic language. I believe the source of the Swedish -n plurals is that the definite plurals of the same words have been extended to the indefinite plural form as well. Swedish then forms a new definite plural ending by adding an -a, e.g. _äpplen_ - _äpplena_. Norwegian has only one noun I can think of with a similar (yet different) conjugation: _øye_ "eye" - _øyne_ "eyes", and the word doesn't pluralize that way in all dialects.

The Norwegian tendency towards using -(e)r plurals for neuter nouns is just regularization, I think. After all, in standard south-east Norwegian, there's only regular plural suffix (not counting the null plural of other neuters), namely -er. The regularization happens mostly to:

1. Native neuter nouns that end in vowels, like the aforementioned _eple_, and other examples like _hjerte_, _øre_, etc. This group also includes some nouns that historically didn't end in vowels, like _(et) sted_ - _steder_, but maybe that one is influenced by the fact that _staðr_ in Old Norse was masculine, not neuter (and _stad_ is masculine in nynorsk). Furthermore, there are some odd cases like _kne_ - _knær_ ("knee") and _tre_ - _trær_ ("tree"). Note that there are Norwegian dialects where the plural of _eple_ is the same as the singular, as was the case in Old Norse. In nynorsk the plural of _hjarte_ is _hjarto_, c.f. Old Norse _hjarta_ - _hjǫrtu/hjǫrto_.

2. Loanwords that have been assigned neuter gender, e.g. _universitet_ - _universiteter_, _bakeri_ - _bakerier_. Far from all such loanwords get -er plurals, but many of them do. In many cases, the plural forms can vary with location and/or individual preferences. It isn't wrong at all to write _to universitet_ "two universities", but _to universiteter_ is probably more common these days, at least in bokmål. This is just speculation, but I think there might be a relationship between the number of syllables in the word and the likelyhood of it getting an -er plural. For example, most people say _to verb_ "two verbs" (I recall that my high school French teacher, who was from the north of Norway, always said _to verber_, which always sounded very strange to me), but _to substantiver_ is at least a valid alternative to _to substantiv_ in my idiolect.


In spite of all this, the rule of thumb is definitely that when in doubt, use no plural ending for neuter nouns.


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## Tjahzi

Ahh, thank you Magb, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Firstly, I wasn't aware of the Norwegian habit of using _-er_ as a plural suffix for loan words. Swedish doesn't (except for a few awkward examples where both forms are used, such as _bagerier _vs _bagerin_ (the former is probably dominant these days even)).

Regarding eyes and ears, they follow and don't follow the pattern as well. _Öga - ögon _and _öra - öron_ both get the _-n_ suffix, but also a vowel shift. Though, since it's likely that these words stem from archaic dual forms, such an irregularity could be attributed to that. However, they also exhibit another trait which set's them further apart from "normal" nouns, namely the fact that they take the regular definite plural suffix (that is, the one which is normally applied to neuter nouns ending in consonants), that means they have the definite plural forms _ögonen _and _öronen_ (that said, the forms _ögona _and _örona_ do occur in spoken language (in what dialects, I don't know, but I occasionally hear it and it sounds ok). 

Another observation that you might find interesting is that the instinct to apply _-n_ to neuter nouns ending in vowels is very strong. The noun _träd_ is neuter and hence the plural is also _träd _(definite plural _träden)_, but it also has a colloquial/dialectal (nominative singular) form which is _trä_, whose plural is _trän_ (and definite plural _träna _(which looks identical to the infinitive of _to train_, but differs in pitch accent).

Other than that, I must say Swedish is very regular. Consonant -> _-Ø, _vowel _-> -n_.


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## Tjahzi

Hm, it appears I started a thread about Swedish neuter nouns and their plural forms this summer. It didn't really get off, but if you are interested, it's a good read. 

(All of it is in Swedish though. )


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## oskhen

Hm, I suppose I was a bit hasty claiming that the general rule is no ending in indefinite  plural of neuter nouns. There are several others, as Magb demonstrated.


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## Magb

Tjahzi said:


> Regarding eyes and ears, they follow and don't follow the pattern as well. _Öga - ögon _and _öra - öron_ both get the _-n_ suffix, but also a vowel shift. Though, since it's likely that these words stem from archaic dual forms, such an irregularity could be attributed to that. However, they also exhibit another trait which set's them further apart from "normal" nouns, namely the fact that they take the regular definite plural suffix (that is, the one which is normally applied to neuter nouns ending in consonants), that means they have the definite plural forms _ögonen _and _öronen_ (that said, the forms _ögona _and _örona_ do occur in spoken language (in what dialects, I don't know, but I occasionally hear it and it sounds ok).



The vowel shift is easy to explain. The neuter plural suffix of Proto-Norse was actually -u/-o (depending on dialect), but it got acopocated away, except in neuters ending with -a, where the -a got replaced by -u/-o. This is also the reason why Icelandic/Faroese and some Scandinavian dialects exhibit u-umlaut in plurals of neuter nouns with -a- in their stems, giving paradigms such as _land_ "land" - _lönd/lønd/lond_ "lands". The surprising thing is that Swedish doesn't exhibit the same vowel change in other neuter nouns ending in -a, such as _hjärta_, but I guess that's yet another case of regularization.

The idea of the -n in the plurals of _öga_ and _öra_ being dual forms is interesting. Semantically it certainly makes sense for these nouns to have dual forms. The fact that they take -en in the definite plural is indeed compelling evidence that they belong to a different declension than the other neuters taking -n.



Tjahzi said:


> Another observation that you might find interesting is that the instinct to apply _-n_ to neuter nouns ending in vowels is very strong. The noun _träd_ is neuter and hence the plural is also _träd _(definite plural _träden)_, but it also has a colloquial/dialectal (nominative singular) form which is _trä_, whose plural is _trän_ (and definite plural _träna _(which looks identical to the infinitive of _to train_, but differs in pitch accent).
> 
> Other than that, I must say Swedish is very regular. Consonant -> _-Ø, _vowel _-> -n_.



That's interesting indeed. I think eastern Norwegian dialects are also quite regular in not allowing null plurals for neuters ending in vowels, but maybe less so than Swedish. In my eastern Norwegian idiolect, for instance, the plural of _blad_ "leaf" is usually _blad_, with the D of course being silent. But these words that have only come to end in vowels due to consonant elision may be confusing the issue. Also, many -- perhaps most -- eastern Norwegians say _blader_.


I was looking at the Dokpro dictionary, and noticed that their bokmål dictionary marks the neuter nouns in question (i.e. ones that can have either -Ø or -(e)r for their plurals) with the code "n3". When looking at their description of these "n3" neuters, I noticed that they have _salt_ as an example (http://www.dokpro.uio.no/bob_forkl.html). _Salt_ is a native word, and it doesn't end in a vowel, and yet many people do indeed say _salter_ for its plural form. Can anyone think of other such examples of native words that don't end in vowels, and yet frequently take -er plurals?

Oh yeah, and one more thing I don't think anyone has mentioned is that plurals of neuters ending in -er is often -re, e.g. _filter_ - _filtre_. This seems to be a different kind of regularization, as there are examples of both masculine (e.g. _vinter_, _latter_) and feminine (e.g. _skulder_, _lever_) nouns that form their plurals the same way. Again, this is a south-eastern Norwegian phenomenon, and typically doesn't apply to conservative dialects from other parts of the country, or to nynorsk.


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## Absu

Thanks everyone for responding. 

I read through my grammar book a little more carefully and it does mention this rule regarding monosyllabic neuter nouns, but not explicitly. There are a list of rules and one of them is:

"7. Some monosyllabic neuter nouns take -er in the indefinite plural:", and then it goes on to list a few examples.

So I guess in a roundabout way it actually does mention that monosyllabic neuter nouns in the indefinite plural don't take -er (most of the time).

Thanks again for the responses!


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## mosletha

Magb said:


> In nynorsk the plural of _hjarte_ is _hjarto_, c.f. Old Norse _hjarta_ - _hjǫrtu/hjǫrto_.


That form is actually optional only, and in my experience not the most commonly used. 

Even more importantly: The committee responsible for revising the nynorsk norm has made a temporary (not final) decision on removing this form altogether. See page 13 of this documenthttp://i56.tinypic.com/2ic05za.jpg, or just this picture. Augo/øyro/hjarto are among my favourite words though, so I'll keep on using them no matter what the dictionary says.


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## Magb

mosletha said:


> That form is actually optional only, and in my experience not the most commonly used. Even more importantly:
> 
> http://i56.tinypic.com/2ic05za.jpg
> 
> Augo/øyro/hjarto are among my favourite words though, so I'll keep on using them no matter what the dictionary says.



Good point. I should've said "in conservative nynorsk".


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## Tjahzi

Indeed, the _o-_ending of _öra_ and _öga_ could be the very rests of the Old Norse _u-_plural suffix. That said, it's interesting that other neuters ending in _-a_ (such as _hjärta - hjärtan_) does not follow this pattern. I have, without any real proof, just attributed this to their supposed dualness. However, as no case of nominal dual usage can be attested in Old Norse, this could be considered "uncertain", at best. What has inclined me to believe in the dual theory is, apart from their irregular form, the fact that this pattern is very clear, for both eyes and ears, in all Slavic languages (even those as analytic as Bulgarian and Macedonian). 

More confusing is maybe the Swedish _land - länder_ forms, but I just realized that this is not the whole truth. There are actually two homonyms that are both neuter and spelled _land _(sing. nom. indef.). The first meaning _ground/land/country _and having the plural form _länder(na). _The other, meaning _small piece of land used for farming _(a usage shared with English (and Norwegian?)), exhibits a completely regular declension pattern, _land - land(en)_. My spontaneous reaction to this would be that the former is a pure loan from German while the latter appears to be a very native word having been around for a while.

Just to be clear, the /d/ in _blad_ is mute both in the singular and plural, right? In Swedish, the declension goes _blad - blad(en)_, then of course with the /d/ pronounced.

 Swedish _salt _has _salter(na) _in plural as well...

Also, I clicked your link and found _høve_ among the examples which I initially assumed to mean _head_, but before I discovered this to be incorrect, it reminded me of the irregularities of the Swedish word for _huvud - huvuden(a)_. Firstly, one can concluded that this word is very similar to its Nynorsk (and Icelandic and Old Norse) counterparts, yet its declension is different. In fact, it behaves as if it ended in a vowel, despite the fact that it doesn't. However, this could be explained by it's sing. definite form which is normally shortened to _huvet _while speaking (not _huvudet)_. In fact, even the sing. indef. can be shortened to _huve_ (still just while speaking though) and hence obviously take the _huven(a)_ in plural, like _trä_ explained above. Obviously, the oddity is that the these forms, while appearing colloquially in the spoken language are very logical, have somehow transfered their plural suffixes to the written language, in which they appear to be totally nonconforming with both the rules and logic!  

Regarding nouns ending in _-er_, Swedish is regular and leaves neuter nouns unchanged, _filter - filter(filtren)_ (with the _e_ in the stem being epenthetic), while utrum, according to their rules, add their plural suffix (which triggers the omission of the epenthetic _e_) as in the case of _lever - levrar(na)_.

Also, sorry, topic starter, for hijacking your thread.


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