Lesson 2.10 · Nouns
The noun paradigm
Every case, gender and number in one table, with nothing left out.
You have now met every piece of a noun. Here they are together — and this is the entire noun system of the language. There is no second pattern, no list of exceptions, and nothing else to come:
Noun markers
| slot | marker |
|---|---|
| masculine | o |
| feminine | a |
| neuter | e |
| nominative | s |
| accusative | n |
| genitive | u |
| dative | ∅ |
| vocative | r |
| plural (always last) | i |
Read as a formula, a noun is:
And here is one word taken all the way through, in all three genders. Every noun in the Bible follows this table by swapping the gender vowel for its own:
The one noun paradigm
Every noun, adjective, and participle follows this single table — substitute the gender vowel.
| masc · log- | fem · agap- | neut · bibli- | masc plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| nominative | logos | agapas | bibliem | logois |
| accusative | logon | agapan | bibliem | logoin |
| genitive | logou | agapau | biblieu | logoiu |
| dative | logo | agapa | biblie | logoi |
| vocative | logor | agapar | bibliem | logoir |
What this buys you
Everything else in the noun family reuses this one table. The word for "the" (Lesson 3.1), describing words (3.2), pronouns like "he" and "this" (3.5), and even verbs turned into describing words (7.2) all take these same endings. Learning this table once is most of the work of the whole course.
Practice
Say what each word is doing. Stems: log- word,
agap- love, pneum- spirit.
agapaislogoiupneume
Show the answers
- Feminine, plural, doing it — "loves" as the subject.
- Masculine, plural, "of" — "of the words".
- Neuter, singular, "to / for / with" — "in spirit", as in John 4:24. (Nothing after the gender vowel.)