Editing Old Norse (section)

=== Gender ===
{{Further|Grammatical gender}}

Old Norse had three [[grammatical gender]]s – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to a noun must [[Agreement (linguistics)|mirror the gender of that noun]], so that one says, "{{lang|non|heill maðr!}}" but, "{{lang|non|heilt barn!}}". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed {{lang|non|karl}}, "man" is masculine, {{lang|non|kona}}, "woman", is feminine, and {{lang|non|hús}}, "house", is neuter, so also are {{lang|non|hrafn}} and {{lang|non|kráka}}, for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to a female raven or a male crow.

All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms,{{sfn|Old Norse for Beginners|loc = [http://www3.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/grammar/neutern.php Neuter nouns]}} and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals.{{sfn|Old Norse for Beginners|loc = [http://www3.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/grammar/femininen.php Feminine nouns]}}

The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as {{lang|non|lim}} and {{lang|non|mund}}.<ref group="cv">{{harvnb|Cleasby|Vigfússon |1874|loc= p.&nbsp;389 col.1, "LIM"; p.&nbsp;437, col.1 "MUND"}}</ref> Some words, such as {{lang|non|hungr}}, have multiple genders, evidenced by their [[Determiner (linguistics)|determiners]] being declined in different genders within a given sentence.{{sfn|''The Menota handbook''|loc=Ch. 8 §3.2.1 "Gender"}}{{sfn|Zoëga|1910|loc = H: ''hungr''}}