Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Qupperneq 105

LÁNISTICIN OC DANSKT í FØROYSKUM
103
ing -s is extremely rare in Faroese and is re-
stricted to a few loanwords (Simonsen 2006).
In some cases it is even reanalyzed as part of
the stem in the singular: tons ‘a ton', drops 'a
drop' and tanks ‘a tank'.
I conducted a number of interviews in
2003 on the Faroe Islands with the purpose
of finding out how certain English loanwords
are adapted into Faroese as part of a larger
project titled Moderne importord i spráka i
Norden 'Modern Impordwords in the Nordic
Languages’ conducted by Helge Sandøy at
the University of Bergen. The aim of the in-
vestigation was to find out, among other
things, what plural endings are used for
harðdiskur 'hard disk', drink and airbag. Note
that the corresponding Danish nouns are all
common gender nouns. We also hoped to
find out whether the -s plural could be used
in the following neuter nouns: tip, clue and
mail. Keep in mind that mail can be both
common gender or neuter in Danish. The re-
sults were presented in Sandøy & Petersen
(2007) and the reader is referred to that arti-
cle for details. The general conclusion of the
study was that the plural -s is possible in
drinks and airbags but not in -disk, the rea-
son being that the simplex native noun
diskur 'disk' blocks the -s ending. Neuter
nouns also show a restricted use of the plu-
ral —s (Sandøy & Petersen 2007). As ex-
pected, clue, for example, generally exhib-
ited no ending in the plural, just as neuter
nouns typically have no plural endings, cf.
e/tt skip 'one ship'//e/W skip-0 'many ships'.
The noun mail displayed the plural -s with a
frequency of 33%.
H. Simonsen wrote her MA dissertation
on loanwords on the Faroe Islands, particu-
larly those in advertising. Portions of her
findings were published in Simonsen (2006).
She was able to find seven different exam-
ples of the -s plural in a collection of 25
newspapers and 10 in advertising, mention-
ing specific examples such as t-shirts, jeans
and peanuts (Simonsen 2006:125).
Her general conclusion was that the -
s plural is exceptional and not generally used
in Faroese. Its limited distribution confirms
the claim in Thomason & Kaufmann
(1988:74-76) that 'inflectional affixes may
enter the borrowing language attached to,
and will remain confined to, borrowed vo-
cabulary items'.
9. Pronouns and numerals
Thomason and Kaufman claim that personal
and demonstrative pronouns and low nu-
merals are more likely to be borrowed at
Stage 3 than in more casual contact situa-
tions, as more intense contact is characteris-
tic of this stage.
There is only one impersonal pronoun
borrowed into Faroese from Danish, this
being mann 'one' (< Dan. man 'one'). It is
widely used in spoken as well as in written
Faroese. It can be spelled either as mann or
as man ‘one’.
The smaller numerals (below 20) are all
native to Faroese. This should in fact not
come as a surprise, as the lower Faroese and
Danish numbers are to some extent ho-
mophonous://7r?/rj (Far.) ~/em (Dan.) and, of
course, cognates.
The cardinal numbers starting at 20 are
Danish. One example is einogtjúgu ~ Dan.
enogtyue Lit.: one-and-twenty = 'twenty one'.
The Danish system was presumably in-
troduced through Danish schools starting in
1846, when Danish schoolbooks were intro-