Question of gender and pets

[John Dingley]

Hi,

Although дитя is an isolate as to declension in Modern 
Russian:
http://tinyurl.com/kka7jox
and today occurs only in set expressions, e.g дитя природы,
it should be remembered that this -nt- declension type was 
widespread in Old Russian, e.g. the diminutives of first names, 
e.g. Ваня, Коля, Костя, could still use this original pattern:
http://tinyurl.com/lonnqb4

This -nt- declension type is well preserved in Modern
Slovene hypocoristics:
Joseph > Jože:

nominative 	Jóže
accusative 	Jóžeta
genitive 	Jóžeta
dative 		Jóžetu
locative 	Jóžetu
instrumental 	Jóžetom

John Dingley

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