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These different groups are known as declensions. Nouns with -a in the nominative singular, like puella "girl" are known as 1st declension nouns, and so on. The following table shows the declension of puella "girl" (1st declension), dominus "lord, master" (2nd declension masculine), and bellum "war" (2nd declension neuter): [3]
The first declension is a category of declension that consists of mostly feminine nouns in Ancient Greek and Latin with the defining feature of a long ā (analysed as either a part of the stem or a case-ending). In Greek grammar, it is also called the alpha declension, since its forms have the letter α, at least in the plural.
The second declension contains two types of masculine Greek nouns and one form of neuter Greek noun. These nouns are irregular only in the singular, as are their first-declension counterparts. Greek nouns in the second declension are derived from the Omicron declension. Some Greek nouns may also be declined as normal Latin nouns.
Many grammars of Spanish suggest that nouns ending in -a are feminine, [14] [15] but there is no requirement that Spanish nouns ending in -a be feminine. [10] Thus, grammars that pose such a requirement also typically include a long list of exceptions, such as el alerta 'alert', el bocata 'sandwich', el caza 'fighter plane', and many others.
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe.
In Spanish, as in other Romance languages, all nouns belong to one of two genders, "masculine" or "feminine", and many adjectives change their form to agree in gender with the noun they modify. For most nouns that refer to persons, grammatical gender matches biological gender.
From the fourth declension noun manus ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending -us, Italian and Spanish derived (la) mano, Romanian mânu>mână, pl. mâini / (reg.) mâni, Catalan (la) mà, and Portuguese (a) mão, which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.
The declension of nouns in Latin that are borrowed from Greek varies significantly between different types of nouns, though certain patterns are common. Many nouns, particularly proper names , in particular, are fully Latinized and declined regularly according to their stem-characteristics.