Someone else is going to explain it in full. I'll just see if I can get this thing started. In some ways it works like another gender, or perhaps, along with masculine animate and masculine inanimate, it would better be described as a sub-gender.
I know that it makes a difference in certain cases - genitive and accusitive are the same in masculine virile, whereas they are not in masculine inanimate, with animate being somewhere in between by having adjectives the same as masculine animate and nouns the same as masculine inanimate, blah blah blah. Hopefully I haven't gone wrong already.
It also makes changes in verbs in the participle which forms the past and imperfective future tenses. Then there are some adverbial gubbins I don't understand or something like that. Well, I did say I don't understand.
My first question, though, is: in a mixed group - men and women, do things revert to the non-virile form?
A man and a woman:
Porozmawiali
Porozmawiały
I'm prepared to put two of my hard-earnt groszes on the first one, but I'm always prepared to find out that I'm wrong.
I know that it makes a difference in certain cases - genitive and accusitive are the same in masculine virile, whereas they are not in masculine inanimate, with animate being somewhere in between by having adjectives the same as masculine animate and nouns the same as masculine inanimate, blah blah blah. Hopefully I haven't gone wrong already.
It also makes changes in verbs in the participle which forms the past and imperfective future tenses. Then there are some adverbial gubbins I don't understand or something like that. Well, I did say I don't understand.
My first question, though, is: in a mixed group - men and women, do things revert to the non-virile form?
A man and a woman:
Porozmawiali
Porozmawiały
I'm prepared to put two of my hard-earnt groszes on the first one, but I'm always prepared to find out that I'm wrong.