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Another possible answer might be: We find exactly those endings in other languages that are not Latin---they were directly imported. – davidrmcharles. Apr 27, 2017 at 22:16. @JoonasIlmavirta And I've wondered if the five noun declensions might have resulted from five tribes, all with their own languages, mixing and merging over centuries.
Historically speaking, the declensions derived from different types of Proto-Indo-European nouns. Nouns with stems ending in a became the first declension, o the second, i or a consonant the third, u the fourth, and e the fifth.
In the specific sense, a "declension" is a class of nouns (or adjectives) that all decline the same way. Latin has five declensions (as in classes), and four conjugations. The endings of the verb conjugations should look familiar to you: first conjugation infinitives end in -āre, second conjugation in -ēre, third in -ere, and fourth in -īre.
I have the 1425 words book (Essential Latin Vocabulary, the 1,425 most common words..., by Mark AE Williams) which for nouns gives declension tables, followed by words of a specific gender following that table, where each gives the genitive singular ending, from which I can compute a noun's declensions. a word will list also any irregular forms.
13. Does anyone know the rough proportions of Latin words that fall into each of the five declensions? Which is most common? Which is least common? The percentages of the two answers come from different sources, one from a corpus and one from a dictionary. A corpus is more descriptive of actual use, but the question didn't specify what was meant.
Latin inherited this structure and it evolved in Latin and its predecessors. In fact, Latin was quite good at regularizing inflection, dividing words into a small number of categories with clear endings for each form. You can find a good description of the origin of Latin's five-declension system in this older question.
If a Latin noun ends in -i it's probably a genitive singular or nominative plural of a second declension noun (nom. sing. in -us or -um; but if it's -ri, then the nom. sg. might be -er). But it might be a dative singular of a third declension noun, in which case the nom. sing. is possibly in -is , but might be different, and even have a altered ...
It seems that the Latin declension is borrowed directly from the Greek one. I only know Greek at a very basic level, but the Greek declension looks unusual as well. The word is not originally Greek, but I would have expected a "more Greek" declension for a borrowed word. I realize that this may be ultimately a question about Greek (or yet ...
I think the answer lies in "Latin declensions and conjugations: from Varro to Priscian" by Daniel J. Taylor, which I found in link in a comment by Alex B. to a question linked to in a comment of cms to this particular question. After browsing the article, I see on page 93 the following assertion:
On the other hand, Weiss 2009 (cited by Cairnarvon's answer here) argues that the retention of -us in ferus is regular due to it being a disyllable and that the loss of *-os in vir is irregular and caused by analogy to puer "boy", gener "son-in-law", socer "father-in-law" (Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin, Chapter 23 ...