Most first declension Greek nouns end in ᾱ or η. All such nouns are feminine in gender. The long alpha is found only in words whose stems end in ε, ι or ρ. First declension nouns in ᾱ/η are declined with the following endings:
| Nominative in -η | Nominative in -ᾱ | |||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||
| Nominative (nom.) | -η | -αι | -ᾱ | -αι | ||
| Genitive (gen.) | -ης | -ῶν | -ᾱς | -ῶν | ||
| Dative (dat.) | -ῃ | -αις | -ᾱͅ | -αις | ||
| Accusative (acc.) | -ην | -ᾱς | -ᾱν | -ᾱς | ||
| Vocative (voc.) | -η | -αι | -ᾱ | -αι | ||
* To decline any noun, you should take the genitive singular form (which can be found in a proper dictionary entry) and remove the ending; to that stem add the appropriate ending for the case and number required.
Nouns have persistent accent, as a general rule. However, the plural genitive of first declension nouns always takes a circumflex on the ultima. And when the accent of the genitive singular is on the ultima, both the genitive and dative will take a circumflex accent, singular and plural. In addition, the plural declension marker -αι is always counted as short for the purpose of determining accent.
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2008-05-06 at 4:24 pm
Mike
“All such nouns are feminine in gender.”
George, “student” μαθητης is masculine.
2008-05-06 at 4:45 pm
George
Most first declension Greek nouns end in ᾱ or η. All such nouns are feminine in gender.
“All such” refers to first-declension nouns with the stated ending. And just to be clear, that is a reference to the ending in the nominative.
Indeed there are also additional first declension nouns that are feminine, ending in a short alpha. And masculine first declension nouns ending in -ης/-ᾱς. Beyond your example, there are many other nouns in this category, for example, ποιητής, “poet” and νεᾱνίᾱς, “young man”. I intend to cover the declension of these in a future post.
However, first declension nouns with a nominative ending in long alpha or eta are feminine.
2008-05-06 at 8:25 pm
Greek First Declension Nouns - Variant 2 « σφοδρα - exceedingly
[...] in Languages Tags: declension, Greek Thanks, Mike, for your earlier comments. Feel free to correct my vocabulary, grammar or understanding of the syntax at any time. I welcome [...]
2008-05-06 at 8:26 pm
Greek First Declension Nouns - Variant 1 « σφοδρα - exceedingly
[...] in Languages Tags: declension, Greek The standard first-declension nouns were described here. The first variant of the first-declension pattern is a short alpha found in the nominative, [...]
2008-05-06 at 9:30 pm
Mike
I miss read your statement. Thanks for the clarification!