Talk:Freiherr

What should the declension of compounds in -herr like Ahnherr, Bauherr, Brotherr, Dienstherr, Hausherr, etc. look like? dewikt shows them with either -n or -en in the genitive with no indication of -en being archaic, and only -en in the plural. Herr indicates that -en in the genitive and -n in the plural are archaic, but I haven't been adding these notations to the compounds. DWDS says e.g. for Freiherr "Substantiv (Maskulinum) · Genitiv Singular: Feldherr(e)n · Nominativ Plural: Feldherren", while Duden says for Freiherr "der Freiherr; Genitiv: des Freiherrn, seltener: Freiherren, Plural: die Freiherren, seltener: Freiherrn". Benwing2 (talk) 03:14, 25 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I personally think Duden is pretty spot on here (for contemporary use at least), though I'm not super familiar with every one of these words (not sure I've ever heard or read Ahnherr..). For Bauherr I'd use m,n:en[less common],m,en:n[less common]. The reason for why the declension of the base (Herr) and the compounds differ is AFAICT the length: These interfixed / deleted -e-'s tend to (sometimes?) depend on the word's length in their frequency / usage. &mdash; Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:47, 25 February 2022 (UTC)