• federal reverse@feddit.orgM
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    1 month ago

    (Ftr: This is an English-language community.)

    But Duden listing Matthias as a possible genitive is wild. It seems they just list it in a weird way, because Jeremia is certainly not a reasonable genitive of Jeremia:

    duden.de: Jeremia | genitive: Jeremia, Jeremias

    • Ephera
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      1 month ago

      Hmm, I think Jeremia is an irregular case, due to it mostly being a biblical name and I think in biblical texts, they write it as “des Jeremia”. No idea, if that was just en vogue when the bible got translated or what the reason is for that.

      But the Duden describes the general rule of thumb for nouns ending in ‘s’ (or similar sounds) by extending them with “-es”: https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/sprachratgeber/Genitiv-auf-s-oder-es

      But “des Matthiases” just sounds archaic.
      They also list “des Hans” as the only possible genitive: https://www.duden.de/deklination/substantive/Hans_Mann
      So, maybe these are special cases, too…