Page:A simplified grammar of the Swedish language.djvu/61

Rh kyrkogård, 'churchyard;' i förmågo af, 'in virtue of.' Thus, too, in the expression i lagom tid, in good time,' we have a survival of an old dative form.

The tendency of the spoken language is to disregard the older grammatical distinction of masculine, reminine and neuter, and to comprehend the two former under one common gender. Thus in speaking of inanimate objects, and even of animals, it is usual to refer to them as den, 'this, that,' instead of han, 'he,' and hon, 'she.'

Numerous divergencies between the written and the spoken language are observable in the tendency to lessen the number of declensions, by using the termination -er to mark the plural of many words for which grammatical rules demand a different ending. This is more especially the case in regard to neuters belonging to the fifth declension, but a similar practice prevails in reference to the plural of feminines belonging to the first declension, in which the terminal -or is frequently changed to -er in the spoken language.

Abstract nouns, or foreign words ending in an or en, do not take the affix-article; as, början, 'beginning,' 'the beginning;' examen, 'examination,' 'the examination.'

When an adjective is preceded by the independent article den, det, de, it may be used in the sense of a noun; as, den flitige belönas, 'the diligent (man, or individual, understood) is rewarded;' den femtonde är snart inne, 'the fifteenth (of the month) will soon be here.'