CHAPTER III.
The Noun.
NUMBER AND GENDER.
11 36. The noun is indeclinable, distinctions of number and gender being left to be gathered from the context, and case relations being, as in English, indicated by inde- pendent words, which are however * postpositions," not prepositions. Thus
Uma ni noru
lit. horse in ride
may mean, according to circumstances, to ride on one stallion or on several stallions, on one mare or on several mares.
Hito ga kimashUa
lit. person [nominative particle] Has come
may mean either that one person has come, or that several people have come. Similarly the word yama may designate one mountain or many mountains, it being properly rather a kind of collective noun like the German " das Gebirg."
IF 37. In the extremely rare cases in which it is absolutely indispensable to mention the sex of an animal, this can be done by the use of the prefixes o, " male," and me, " female," the resulting compound being sometimes slightly modified by euphony. Thus :
ushi, " any bovine animal ; " o-ushi, "a bull, "an ox;" jjie-ushi, " a cow."
