<Is there much theory of German plurals at all? Or do you just have to look them up?
Certain types of noun are consistent (e.g. those ending in -ung or -schaft) but generally it's a can of würmer. <I think we can ignore the related but irrelevant meanings Sorry, just replying to the Rev. Clifford. < - if meaning affected how plurals formed, languages would be very different things.... Yes, of course meaning doesn't affect how plurals form, but the reverse can be true. Example: Die Bank - the bench or the bank (as in natwest barclay's midland lloyds) Die Bänke - the benches Die Banken - the banks Btw, I hope the dieresis comes through correctly. A "dieresis" is the mark (two dots above a letter) used to indicate, inter alia, the process of umlaut, and is colloquially known as an "umlaut". This is a sort of parallel to "drone (process)" versus "drone (pipe)" chirs John -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 24 April 2007 09:24 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [NSP] Re: German word Hartvig Körner wrote: < Theoretically, the plural form would be "die Bordunen" According to which theory? According to both Wildhagen and Harraps (the only German dictionaries I happen to have at hand), Brockhaus and bagpipe.de it's Bordune (except in the dative. All German plurals end in "n" in the dative.) at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordun we find "Bordun" defined as: 1) an organ stop, 2) the lowest pitched in a set of bells, and "3) einen während der gesamten Melodie oder signifikanter Teile eines Musikstücks ausgehaltenen Begleitklang gleicher Tonhöhe" [An accompanying sound of constant pitch sustained throughout the entire melody or significant parts of a piece of music] (in other words, a drone) and last but not least: "4) umgangssprachlich auch die Bordunpfeifen und Bordunsaiten (siehe weiter unten)." [colloquially also the drone pipes and drone strings (see below for further information)] So, if we want to be pedantic, "Bordun" refers to the droning phenomenon and the bit(s) of the instrument producing it is one Bordunpfeife or several Bordunpfeifen (the "n" here is the plural in all grammatical cases, not just the dative (German is complicated)). I suppose strictly speaking it's the same in English ; "drone pipes" produce the "drone". So we call them "drones" for short. To further complicate matters, some nouns in German can, but need not, add an "e" in the dative singular - so we can find, at http://www.mittelalter.de/shop/produktkatalog/Sackpfeifen,Sackpfeifen_32_produktkatalog_liste.html , for example - "mit 1 [einem] Bordune" (dative after "mit") [with one drone]. Very confusing, but correct. So, to sum up: It's "one 'Bordun'" (but can - but doesn't have to - be "with, from, to etc. one 'Bordune'") and "more than one 'Bordune'" (but *must* be "with, from, to etc. more than one 'Bordunen'"). And colloquially the word can be used to mean "drone (hardware)" No prizes for guessing what I've been doing for a living since 1974 ;-) HTH. chirs To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
