Re: Creole Romance?

> >And those s-plurals are all French or other foreign loans, if not
> >loans from Low German, oder?
>
> Ober German dialects also have s-plurals (nicht wahr Mädels und
> Jungs? :^)

I just looked it up. Example 'die blauen Jungs' "matrosen". And
under 'Mädel' pl. -s (umgsp.), -n (oberdt.). That sounds to me like
plural -s is nothern, thus platt. Perhaps you don't recognize
innerdeutsch loans? ;-)

> >>saying e.g. die Müllers, die Schmidts, die Maiers, die Hubers, die
> >>Schröders, die Fischers.
> >
> >That's generally considered to be a genitive s.
>
> Really? "Die Müllers haben die Schmidts getroffen." Nominative:
> die Müllers. Akkusative: die Schmidts. (Obacht: *_die_ xxxs*)

The explanation I've seen is that it's short for Müllers Haus etc. It
exists in Danish too and we have no native -s plurals.

> It is in "Müllers Freund Schmidt" and "Schmidts Freund Müller"
> where there is a genitive... singular (as though "des Müllers

Freund").

> It is this the genitive you mean -- and which Germans in general
> stubbornly tend to write with apostrophe, Müller's, Schmidt's,
> in spite of an orthogr. reform 100 years ago. (The same happens
> to another category, "ins, fürs" --> "in's, für's". :^)
>

That genitive apostrophe thing appears in Danish too. I believe it's
a recent influence from English.


Torsten