Talk:Mosjøen

The gender of Mosjøen

@Bagun-za: The phrase “mitt <placename>” is no good way to determine what gender a placename is. You’ll even find people writing “mitt Volda” and “mitt Svelvik”, despite no disagreement about the names being feminine. The mitt is merely because they’re place names, and works as a substitute to the most grammatical option (min Mosjø, mi Vold) when that’s unavailable or not preferred.

You can also be certain that Mosjøen hasn’t been reanalysed as a new root (cf. verden), because compounds use the indefinite form Mosjø, not Mosjøen (thus never *Mosjøenværing). Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 11:32, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

@Eiliv: Hi. Towns and placenames are generally neuter, be it, mitt Oslo, mitt Mosjøen, mitt Svelvik. Both because they're proper nouns and because they bear the meaning 'settlement', 'community', 'place' (abstract), not 'sea', 'hill', 'lake', 'mountain' (natural). You ought to keep in mind that Mosjøen is not a sea, it's a town and a community. As for mountains, lakes, and other natural formations, one may of course speak of Sognefjorden min, Svelvika mi, Sjusjøen min, Sollihøgda mi og Vossefjella mine. Nonetheless, it's not up to Wiktionary contributors to do the linguistic analysis and argumentation. We must use historical, third-party sources, such as encyclopedias (where I found "mitt Mosjøen"). In this regard, I could mention that the National Library's database returns a lot of hits on search phrases like "mitt Oslo", "mitt Mosjøen", "mitt kjære Bergen", "mitt Trondheim" (but barely any with "min"). Best, --Bagun-za (talk) 16:40, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Bagun-za: Hello.

> You ought to keep in mind that Mosjøen is not a sea

In the name Mosjøen, sjø refers to a place by a sea, not the sea itself (cf. Norsk Ordbok and Norsk stadnamnleksikon). Thus Mosjøen is, in fact, a sjø.

> We must use historical, third-party sources, such as encyclopedias (where I found "mitt Mosjøen").

As I wrote, “mitt <placename>” is no good way at determining that, because it’s the same with all names. I have never even seen it with min or mi. And I would say the definite article is an as good, if not better, way at determining such. As it’s never explicitly stated that Mosjøen is neuter, it’s no less an analysis to conclude that Mosjøen is neuter based on “mitt Mosjøen”, than masculine based on the definite article.

The Bokmål article for Mosjøen also states it’s masculine. Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 21:25, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The use of neuter possessives/articles before place names is a phenomenon that is independent of the grammatical gender of the name. You can find examples of “Mitt Trøndelag” too, but the idea that Trøndelag is neuter is absurd, because the definite form is of course Trøndelagen (not *Trøndelaget). Same goes for e.g. Hedmark.

In Oslo there is disagreement over the name Majorstua/Majorstuen, with some people claiming it is masculine and other people claiming it is feminine. Nobody claims that it is neuter. Still, et Majorstuen/Majorstua uten trikk is perfectly grammatical, while neither ei nor en would be possible in this context (even if you use the name in indefinite form, unless you talk about the demolished house after which the area was named).

A related phenomenon is “pannekakesetninger”. One would say pannekaker er godt, not pannekaker er gode. The noun is feminine plural, but the adjective is neuter singular instead of agreeing with the noun. A possible answer would be det er det (not de(i)). Another related example is slafsing er stygt (not stygg). Likewise only parkering forbode is considered correct Nynorsk, not parkering forboden. Hått (talk) 17:11, 18 December 2022 (UTC)