Talk:common

Isn't the third def (grammar) that of the noun ? I'm not sure about English, but in French, neutre is a noun that perfectly fits this definition. --Slord 21:47, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. In English, the genders are adjectives. We say "masculine noun" and "common noun". We do not say "the masculine" or "a common". Can you rephrase what you are trying to say? — Hippietrail 00:08, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The definition was for a noun, but was under the adjective section. I've changed it. — Paul G 11:31, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is the neuter gender the same as the common gender? If so, the definition and translations can be moved to "neuter". I'm not sure if they are - some languages have a common gender (some Nordic languages) and others have a neuter gender (eg, German). Are there any languages that have both? If so, they are not the same thing. — Paul G 11:31, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In Latin, adjectives that have the masculine and feminine form the same but a different neuter form sometimes have these referred to as common and neuter. --Vladisdead 11:33, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Apparently, Dutch has distinct genders called "common" and "neuter" (as mentioned in the discussion page on the word "abbreviation"). — Paul G 10:56, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well Dutch is a bad example. It actually has masculine and feminine

but only has two words for "the" so simplistic textbooks fudge over genders. Swedish and Danish and some forms of Norwegian have a true Neuter/Common gender system, in this case Neuter and Common are opposite! — Hippietrail 01:06, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Swedish translation "utrum" is a noun, while "common" is an adjective

The Swedish translation of the fourth meaning (of the common gender) is "utrum". Well, kind of. It's problematic because "utrum" is a noun, while "common" is, in this case, an adjective. As far as I know, there's no adjective form of "utrum", nor any noun form of the of the common gender meaning of "common". So what do we do? — Daniel Brockman, 2004-09-14

I've done this in a few cases where an English noun or adjective translates to a Germn prefix:

====Translations====
*Swedish: [[utrum]] ''x'' (''A noun in Swedish'')

Replace x with whatever the gender of "utrum" is in Swedish. Hopefully we'll standardize what to do in these cases. It might also be good to include a quote but I'm not sure how best to include quotes in the translation section.

I think it would be a brilliant use of Categories to flag problem translations such as this by the way! — Hippietrail 01:25, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

English adjective - grammar: one or two meanings?

There is: "5. (grammar) In some languages, particularly Germanic languages, of the gender originating from the coalescence of the masculine and feminine categories of nouns."
The adjective common is also used in case of languages like Greek (which has mascline, feminine and neuter gender) to refer to words which have both masculine and feminine gender, like παῖς either masculine or feminine, meaning boy or girl.
Are these two different meanings of common or just one meaning used in different context? -80.133.125.112 23:56, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Attributive vs predicative

The comparative and superlative forms of common are usually more/most common. Commonest is sometimes used instead in front of a noun. Is this a general behavior? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)