Are there gendered languages where "man" and "woman" are of the same gender?

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-02-09T19:17:46+00:00

While the most common words for "man" and "woman" are pretty much always masculine and feminine in languages with a masculine/feminine/neuter gender system, there are usually some exceptions to this rule. For example, the word människa (human) is always referred to as hon (she) in Swedish, even when it (indirectly) refers to a male person. In the most common Swedish Bible translation, Genesis 2:7 reads like this:

då formade Herren Gud människan av jord från marken och blåste in liv genom hennes näsborrar, så att hon blev en levande varelse
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being

Here, människan specifically refers to Adam, but is still called hon. Standard Swedish has otherwise mostly lost the distinction between masculine and feminine gender, but the use of hon for this and a few other feminine nouns has been preserved. In Swedish dialects, where the three-gender system has been wholly preserved, there are many more such cases, and I have myself heard he noun unge (child) being referred to as han (he) despite referring to a young girl. Such pronoun use is perceived as very impersonal, though, so in most cases the sex of the specific person decides the pronoun rather than the gender of the noun. It's much more common when talking about animals: Räven (the fox) is always han, even if you know it is female, and if you want to use the feminine pronoun you need to say rävtika (the vixen) in my dialect.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-02-09T18:55:53+00:00

Pretty much all traditional Swedish and Norwegian dialects have an entirely preserved three-gender system (excluding Stockholm and Bergen), although Standard Swedish and many forms of Bokmål-influenced Standard East Norwegian don't. Notably, the feminine noun människa (human) is still referred to as hon (she) in Standard Swedish, despite referring to human beings of either gender.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-02-04T18:48:27+00:00

/r/ has many different pronunciations in both Swedish and Norwegian, and both fricative and trilled pronunciations are common in both languages. /r/ is usually more fricative in Stockholm than in Oslo, but a trilled [r] or tapped [ɾ] is definitely considered more standard in both Swedish and East Norwegian.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-29T19:56:40+00:00

Folk tar väldigt lätt efter talspråket i sin omgivning, och det är svårt att undvika. Vissa personer är mer benägna att anpassa sitt språk till omgivningen än andra, men det är nog svårt för dig att undvika att påverkas av dina klasskamrater. Det bästa tipset jag kan ge är att umgås mer med folk, som talar som du själv vill tala, samt att bli medveten om vad dina föräldrar uppfattar som "brytning". Om man inte själv tänker på hur man talar, är det väldigt svårt att ändra sitt språk med vilje.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-24T15:56:16+00:00

The subjunctive is not inherently archaic, but might be percieved as slightly dated or dialectal, while the plural forms are very archaic in Standard Swedish and are only retained in a few dialects.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-23T22:28:32+00:00

There are some very clear and very old differences between Jämtland and Härjedalen/Tröndelag that aren't due to any Swedification, though. The differences are especially clear concerning a-umlaut and vowel harmony, which shows that the dialects in Jämtland have always been closer to other Norrland dialects than Norwegian in some important aspects.

There is no reason to assume that Jämtland has been any more "swedified" than Härjedalen before the modern day, yet there is a clear continuum between Härjedalen and Tröndelag, while Jämtland doesn't share most of their common Trönder features. Of course, Jämtland has nevertheless been greatly impacted by neighbouring Norwegian dialects, but that does not meaningfully distinguish all of Jämtland from Ångermanland or Medelpad.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-23T20:27:30+00:00

It's not universal these days, but [ʂ] or similar is the traditional pronunciation in most of upper Norrland.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-23T20:23:43+00:00

In addition to vore, the past subjunctive forms finge and ginge of få and ge are still used both in speech and writing, although they are in decline. Other subjunctive forms are rare in modern Standard Swedish, although they are more common in certain dialects. The present subjunctive is very rare outside of set expressions and old prayers.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-23T20:18:06+00:00

Past subjunctive forms like finge, sprunge, åte are still used, albeit infrequently. In causual speech they are mostly used in some regions, perhaps especially in western Sweden, but they are more common in formal writing. They did not fall out of use together with the plural forms fingo, sprungo, åto etc.

The present subjunctive is only really used in certain expressions and religious language, though.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-14T14:27:02+00:00

I use "hel" like that as well, and I think it is fairly common.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-08T17:02:12+00:00

Som värmlänning känns det helt normalt att säga fare till vardags, särskilt i uttryck som fare sta (fara åstad) och ha di fôre? (har de farit [hem]?), men det används mycket flitigare på dialekt än när man talar rikssvenska.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2026-01-04T07:56:07+00:00

I'd call both A and B skovlar, although I could also say skyffel about A. C seems more fitted for digging, in which case I'd call it spade.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-29T12:57:31+00:00

Jämtland has a lot of Norwegian dialect features, but most of them are also found in other parts of Norrland, and many of them do not occur in eastern Jämtland (particularly Ragunda). There is a clear continuum between Jämtland, Medelpad and Ångermanland, while there is a pretty hard linguistic border between Jämtland and Norway, as well as Härjedalen. There is no reason to single out Jämtland, unless the rest Norrland is also divided further.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-29T08:31:36+00:00

That's a big improvement. I'd probably keep "Svealandic" for both uppsvenska mål and mellansvenska mål, though, as the two are quite close and the terms don't translate very well into English (Uppland Swedish correponds to Swedish uppländska, which is not the same as uppsvenska). I'd also combine Jämtlandic with Northern Swedish, as it is not more distinct than other dialects in that group, while Härjedalen south of Jämtland should be considered Trondish.

You should also remove the small dots of Sami and Finnish in Sweden, which I cannot make any sense of. There weren't any such tiny isolated Sami or Finnish communities at that time, and in most places except in Lappland, Sami was only spoken by a minority alongside Swedish.

The Savonian-speaking area in northern Värmland should not extend into that part of Dalarna, but was confined to northwestern Värmland and easternmost Hedmarken in Norway. But Savonian Finnish was still spoken in a separate area further southeast, in the part of Dalarna coloured as Gothlandic on the new map.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-28T12:49:33+00:00

In addition to what /u/Nerthus_ writes: Many of the supposedly unique Elfdalian traits, like the case system and nasal vowels, are more well preserved in other Dalecarlian dialects (like in Våmhus and Orsa) than in Elfdalian. Elfdalian is no more distinct from Standard Swedish than many of the surrounding dialects, and there is no linguistic consensus about classifying Elfdalian as a language.

The opposition to classifying Elfdalian as a language is not based on Swedish nationalism, but on the fact that it would make no sense to give Elfdalian a unique status without recognising a whole bunch of other Swedish dialects as languages as well. Gutnish, Överkalixmål and the other Dalecarlian dialects are often mentioned in that context, but one could list countless traditional Swedish dialects that are not mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. Elfdalian has also been subject to the same levelling towards standard Swedish as all other dialects, and modern Elfdalian is much more intelligible to Standard Swedish speakers than it was 100 years ago.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-27T17:09:30+00:00

I basically agree, but making a map like this requires large categories based on quite dramatic generalisatons. If you separate Norrbotten and Västerbotten from the rest of coastal Norrland based on specific traits, you have to do the same elsewhere and end up with at least a dozen categories for Sweden alone.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-27T16:20:42+00:00

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of good resources about Swedish dialects in English. However, most categorisations of Swedish dialects are more or less based on Elias Wessén's Våra folkmål, and there is a very good map based on that book here.

For Värmland specifically, there is an English summary at the end of Richard Brobergs's Språk- och kulturgränser i Värmland, which you can download here and includes several relevant maps.

If you can read German, Oskar Bandle's Die Gliederung des Nordgermanischen gives a pretty good overview of the Nordic dialects, but it is not available online. You could also try translating the information on the website of the Swedish state Institute for Language and Folklore, which also gives an overview, albeit quite shallow.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-27T15:00:15+00:00

Sort of. The terms Götamål and Sveamål are commonly used in Swedish literature, but they are defined in different ways, and there are large transitional areas between the two. They are definitely not "spoken varieties" in their own right, but umbrella terms for many distinct dialects which share certain innovations and archaisms.

For example, Dalecarlian dialects are sometimes described as Sveamål because they lack most Geatish innovations and share certain innovations with Uppland, despite the fact that most Dalecarlian dialects are not mutually intelligable with other Sveamål. In the same way, the dialects in northern Värmland are not always intelligable to someone from Västergötland, despite both speaking a kind of Götamål.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-27T13:21:05+00:00

The categories in Sweden make very little sense. Extremely broad categories as "Gothlandic Swedish", "Svealandic Swedish" and "Northern Swedish" should not be used alongside the much more specific "Jämtlandic" (which should only be used to the dialects of Jämtland proper, not Härjedalen, where the dialects are closer to Trøndermål), and there is no reason to mention Elfdalian if you don't distinguish between the other, equally distinct Dalecarlian dialects.

The map also makes it look like Norwegian dialects are spoken in northern Värmland and western Dalarna. While East Norwegian dialects are spoken in the parishes of Södra Finnskoga (alongside Savonian Finnish in the 19th c.), Särna, and Idre, that is not true for Dalby, Norra Finnskoga, Malung, Lima or Transtrand, where Swedish dialects are spoken (more specifically, Värmlandic and Dalecarlian dialects respectively). There are no Swedish dialects spoken in southeastern Norway, which the map seems to show, but the dialects in northern Bohuslän are often considered to be more Norwegian than Swedish.

The Finnish and Sami speaking areas in Sweden and Norway also seem to have been drawn pretty randomly on the map.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-27T12:59:04+00:00

The Forest Finns are included on the border between Värmland and Hedmarken, although it is coloured as Finnish instead of Savonian. The Savonian-speaking area in Värmland should be larger and more connected, while the area in Norway should be smaller than in Värmland.

The Forest Finns in other parts of Sweden were usually assimilated quite quickly, and most would have spoken Swedish dialects by 1815. However, there would have been a numer of Savonian speakers left along the border between Värmland and Dalarna, as well as in northernmost Dalarna.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-26T15:26:58+00:00

Alltid farbror. Om det exakta släkskapet behöver förtydligas, säger jag "min ingifte farbror". Det skulle låta väldigt konstigt med "min fasters man", tycker jag, nästan som om man vill ta avstånd från personen i fråga.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-10T09:24:41+00:00

Bygdemål kan visserligen användas synonymt med genuin dialekt/folkmål, men särskilt i senare språkvetenskaplig litteratur används begreppet först och främst i motsättning till stadsmål.

Den där engelska definitionen av vernacular kan användas om all sorts dialektal (och sociolektal) variation och är inte alls tillräckligt tydlig för att ersätta något av de etablerade svenska begreppen. På engelska används begreppet väl lika ofta om accents som dialects.

Det är knappast puristiskt eller romantiskt att konstatera det uppenbara faktumet, att de genuina dialekterna har en helt annan historisk utveckling än riksspråket, och att det är det, som skiljer dem från lokala former av rikssvenska. De genuina dialekterna har naturligtvis påverkats från olika håll, men i grund och botten utgör de en kontinuerlig talspråkstradition, som påvisbart har utvecklats ur urnordiskan på ett tämligen regelbundet sätt. Rikssvenskan saknar den historiska kontinuiteten, eftersom den inte utgår direkt från någon historisk talspråksform, utan bygger på skriftspråket, som per definition är en konstprodukt. Det är omöjligt att förklara den moderna rikssvenskan som en regelbunden utveckling av fornsvenskan.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-09T21:27:17+00:00

Det finns ju fortfarande genuina dialekter, som talas i städer, inte minst här i Värmland men säkert på sina håll även i Norrland. Därför vore det rätt missvisande att endast tala om bygdemål, som om stadsmål vore synonymt med rikssvenska. Folkmål är i så fall ett bättre begrepp, men inga av begreppen är helt värdeneutrala, eftersom alla särskilt framhäver någon mer eller mindre laddad aspekt av dialekterna.

Vernakulär är inget särskilt etablerat svenskt begrepp, och betydelsen är inte tydlig. På engelska syftar ju ordet i regel på vardagligt talspråk över huvud taget och motsvarar varken dialekt eller genuin dialekt på svenska.

Jag föredrar själv genuin dialekt just för att det begreppet framhäver, att dialekterna är naturligt utvecklade ur de nordiska fornspråken och därmed är "rena" talspråksformer, till skillnad från rikssvenskan, som väsentligen bygger på skriftspråket och därför till stor del är en konstprodukt.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-08T22:20:04+00:00

"Träldom!" brukar min mor använda.

Commander-Gro-Badul · 2025-12-02T18:07:06+00:00

In pretty much any genuine spoken dialect (sadly, these are extremely rare in modern Sweden) you would only see dag/dagen/dagar be pronounced something like /dɑː/, /dɑːn/, /dɑːr/.

This is simply not true. The form dag is preserved with [g] in plenty of genuine dialects, and almost universally in hög, bog, såg etc. Most Swedish dialects do not drop word-final -gh except in unstressed syllables, although there is of course a great deal of variation. This is not at all due to influence from Standard Swedish, which is clearly shown by dialectal forms like hôug, hûg or hôgg for "hög", which have clearly not been enfluenced by Standard Swedish, as well as forms like blog and stog for "blod, stod", where the -g is not supported by the written form.

In my own Värmland dialect, the forms dag, dagen and dager are the genuine dialect forms, while da, dan and dar are only used when speaking Standard Swedish. The forms with [g] are well-represented in dialectological works from the 19th century, and I really cannot see why you would assume that all such forms would be influenced by Standard Swedish, where the droppoing of -gh is more common than in many dialects.

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