Second declension nouns can either be masculine, feminine or neuter in gender. Masculine and feminine second-declension nouns share case endings. Because of this, there are many that are either feminine or masculine in gender, with only the use of article to distinguish them (e.g. ὁ/ἡ θεός, the god/goddess).
| Masculine/Feminine | Neuter | |||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||
| Nominative (nom.) | -ος | -οι | -ον | -α | ||
| Genitive (gen.) | -ου | -ων | -ου | -ων | ||
| Dative (dat.) | -ῳ | -οις | -ῳ | -οις | ||
| Accusative (acc.) | -ον | -ους | -ον | -α | ||
| Vocative (voc.) | -ε | -οι | -ον | -α | ||
* 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.
Unlike first declension nouns, the plural genitive of second declension nouns does not always take a circumflex on the ultima. But as with first declension nouns, 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 -οι is always counted as short for the purpose of determining accent.
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2008-05-12 at 9:11 pm
First “Official” Greek Round Up! « ἐν ἐφέσῳ: Thoughts and Meditations
[...] A number of bloggers are documenting their Greek learning, particularly Nick and Nathan. Others have been placing extremely helpful pieces of info on their blogs that any Greek student should know and never forget! For example, George has been giving us Noun Paradigms in a couple Posts: HERE, HERE, and HERE! [...]