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NB: The notes here on Old Fortunatian have an etymological focus and therefore should not be treated as a complete description of OF nouns. M = masculine F = feminine N = neuter Old Fortunatian had six basic noun classes and two poetic ones. The accusatives in the basic noun classes are: 1F port#, port-a:s 2M er#, er-o:s 2N nomin#, nomin-a 3MF pisk#, pisk-e:s 3M que:sto:r#, que:sto:r-e:s 3F que:sta:r#, questa:r-e:s The poetic noun classes were used in OF to replace masculine and feminine nouns in poetic or rhetorical contexts. They were: 1P (=4F) port#, port-e:s 2P (=5M) e:r#, e:r-u:s 1P replaced 1F, 3F, and 3MF (when it was F); 2P replaced 2M, 3M, and 3MF (when it was M). In the evolution from OF to Classical Fortunatian (CF) (I'm not such a fool to call a language in progress 'Modern') 1P, 3MF, 3M, and 3F merged. The default gender of the new category (fot.-,fikS-, petSor-, petSar-#, -eS) was F except in the case of self-evidently M nouns such as fat., fat.eS 'father', M, compared with mat., mat.eS 'mother', F. The 3M words that were not self-evidently masculine but nonetheless required a gender distinction moved to the category (#, -oS). 2P survived as a kind of of augmentive noun class; thus er, eroS 'sir', but er, eruS, '(mighty) sir'. A parallel noun class has begun to develop in CF for the F; thus er, eraS 'madame', but er, eriS '(most gentle) madam'. 1F, 2M, and 2N (n@mn, n@mna) remain. Secondary noun classes (a, aS; o, oS; e, eS; u, uS; i, iS) develop from the epenthesis of the appropriate vowel from the plural suffix to singular nouns that end in hard-to-pronounce final clusters (from the viewpoint of a Fortunatian, that is, not from Mr Thalmann's ;) ). Any questions or comments?