On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 08:24, Teja Johnson-Lewis wrote:
> How can you tell masculne, feminine, and neuter words apart?
>
They´re tricky, those. Mostly, you simply have to tell them apart by
practice. This means simply learning them by rote. The best way to do
this is to observe the declension on modern-day Icelandic web sites.
Unfortunately, there are no hard or fast rules for determination, as the
Old Norse/Old Icelandic people didn´t use articles often enough to allow
for the determination of gender. Modern Icelandic uses only slight more
articles, mostly because people really *need* the additional accuracy
due to complications such as the telephone and internet, where sound
quality is perhaps not the best.
Mostly, though, native Icelanders grow up in a culture where they simply
learn it.
Hope this helps.
-Ragin