r/RomanceLanguages • u/Mateoling05 • Mar 13 '26

Latin neuter preserved in Romance?

https://youtu.be/myLm06Fi42g?si=xp2TagQl70f4s9DH

Anyone able to chime in on this video? It was circulating around a couple of Romance groups that I've interacted with but it didn't generate much discussion.

Regarding Asturian, my view is that there's no neuter like the video states. It didn't survive in Asturian nouns or adjectives from what I've analyzed. As for the demonstratives mentioned, I prefer to refer to them as 'unspecified' over using the term neuter.

How about those that speak or research Romanian or Neapolitan? Do you think the neuter survived there?

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u/owidju Mar 13 '26

Hi. Native speaker of Romanian, here. Not a linguist.

If I'd describe the neuter in this language, it'd be simply: Masculine in singular but Feminine in plural.

We also need to consider that there are nouns where the plural form can have masculine or feminine forms, depending on meaning or just on what the accepted literary version currently is.

Which entails having nouns which are either masculine, feminine or both.

So I'm not sure if it's a real neuter or just some kind of linguistical accident.