Genders - masculine, feminine, common, and neuter.
The vast majority of English nouns are common (i.e. equally applicable to both males and females) and are spelt the same regardless of whether they refer to men or women; the few occasions when there is a difference in spelling are mostly when the nouns refer to certain types of occupation (e.g. actor / actress, waiter / waitress, policeman / policewoman) or to certain animals (e.g. fox / vixen, lion / lioness, boar / sow, bull / cow). A noun is classed as neuter if it refers to an object.
Plurals are usually made just by adding an -s. Common exceptions are nouns ending in -f (plural ending -ves, with the f omitted), and nouns ending in a consonant followed by a -y (e.g. lady) (plural ending -ies (no y)). Some nouns, including the names of fish, are the same in both singular and plural form, while some exist only as plurals (e.g. scissors, trousers). As with irregular plurals in other languages, knowledge of irregular plural forms can only be gained through practice. Finally, unlike in other European languages, the gender of an English noun makes no difference to the spelling of any adjective which describes the noun.
2006-08-15 03:19:18
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answer #1
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answered by Robert C 5
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Nouns usually don't have genders in the English language. A few do, like alumnus (male) and alumna (female). Nouns are usually pluralized by using the letter s at the end. For example, cat is pluralized cats. There are many, many exceptions though, which you'll have to learn on your own. Going back to the alumnus/alumna example, those words are pluralized in the form "alumni."
2006-08-14 15:30:16
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answer #2
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answered by Blondie 3
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Chinese does not have any grammatical genders (and a lot of the other things associated with inflected languages. According to Wikipedia, Danish does have gendered nouns: "Standard Danish nouns fall into only two grammatical genders: common and neuter, while some dialects still often have masculine, feminine and neuter. While the majority of Danish nouns (ca. 75%) have the common gender, and neuter is often used for inanimate objects, the genders of nouns are not generally predictable and must in most cases be memorized.." "Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect."
2016-03-27 02:01:42
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answer #3
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answered by Jennie 4
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You don't have much of a life do you..get a dog
2006-08-14 15:30:21
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answer #4
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answered by Anonymous
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