20 



lives. Example ; 'fe^^, masc. a man ; YJt*5^» masc. a little man. 

 6e-<iti, fem. a woman ; be^jn^n, fern, a little woman, &c. They 

 should, therefore, be excepted. Those nouns ending in " <i^ or 

 e-iXt," he says, " are commonly masculine." Some are and others are 

 not ; many of them are feminine, as ge^dldc, the moon ; ciX)Ue^<it, a 

 hag, &c. His rule for distinguishing the gender of a noun, by the per- 

 sonal pronouns ^, or ^^, 5 or ^^, i. e. he and she, and by the inflec- 

 tions of the Article itn (the^ in the genitive case masc. and fem. and 

 the aspiration of initial mutable consonants in the Gen. case masc. 

 and Nom. singular of feminines, with the eclipsing of ^ by c in the 

 same cases which require aspiration in the Gen. masculine and Nom. 

 Singular of feminines, is useful to a student who finds the language 

 written before him ; but a speaker or writer of his own sentiments 

 must be acquainted with the gender of the noun before any of those 

 words, which are subordinate to the noun with respect to concord, 

 can receive, from him, their concordant forms. To the latter, there- 

 fore, they are no guide. His rule to know the gender of a noun by 

 the adjective following it in the Nom. Singular, which keeps an in- 

 itial mutable consonant from aspiration if of the masculine, and ad- 

 mits of aspiration, if of the feminine gender ; as Y^<tti ttictjr, a good 

 man — bettti ■m<X)t, a good woman, is equally defective as the last 

 mentioned. What I if the initial of the adjective were a vowel, or 

 an immutable consonant, how then is it to be distinguished ? Cer- 

 tainly not otherwise than by a previous knowledge of the noun's 

 gender, as in the former case. — His rule for distinguishing the gen- 

 ders of nouns whose initials are vowels, are equally exceptionable 

 as the two former. 



With respect to compound nouns formed of two substantives, he 

 says, they retain the gender of the latter, as bd^nft^j is masculine, be- 

 cause f^S ^^^ latter part of the compound is so, and fiJ5fte<iti is ac- 



