Page:A simplified grammar of the Swedish language.djvu/27

Rh namnet, 'the name;' rike, n., 'kingdom,' riket, 'the kingdom;' dalar, m. pl., 'valleys,' dalarne, 'the valleys;' sagor, f. pl., 'tales,' sagorna, 'the tales;' namn, n. pl., 'names,' namnen, 'the names;' riken, n. pl., 'kingdoms,' rikena, 'the kingdoms.'

The proper application of these affixes depends, (1) upon the form of declension to which the noun belongs; (2) on whether the word ends in a vowel or a consonant; and (3) on considerations of euphony.

This mode of incorporating the article with the noun is a special characteristic of the Scandinavian tongues which they derive from the Old Northern. It does not exist in Old Gothic, but it is met with under a modified form in Albanian, and in the kindred languages of Bulgaria, and Roumania.

In the Old Northern we may trace the origin of this method of noun-and-article agglutination to a grammatical construction which admitted of putting a demonstrative pronoun after the noun which it defined; as, madr hinn, m., 'man that;' eik hin, f., 'oak that;' dyr hitt, n., 'animal that;' hestar hinir, m. pl., 'horses those;' tungur hinar, f. pl., 'tongues those;' börn hin, n. pl., 'children those.'

In the course of time the noun and pronoun were connected in writing, as madrhinn; and finally, in following the current mode of pronunciation, the h was dropped, leaving only as suffixes inn, in, itt, pl., ir, ar, in. The Scandinavian twin branches of language, known as Svenska, Swedish, and Dansk-Norsk, Dano-Norwegian, which have been derived from the Old Northern as their common