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German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of ...
Disyllabic nouns ending in -al, -ar and -an, with long stems, sometimes drop the -a-before an ending beginning with a vowel, e.g. masculine singular ackar "acre, field", genitive singular ackres. Note that in these cases, the -a- is an epenthetic vowel that was not originally present (compare Gothic akrs < Proto-Germanic *akraz ), and so the ...
The same endings are used for the negative indefinite article-like word (kein-), and the adjectival possessive pronouns (alias: possessive adjectives, possessive determiners), mein-(my), dein-(your (singular)), sein-(his), ihr-(her and their), unser-(our), euer/eur-(your (plural)), Ihr-(your if addressing an authority figure, always capitalised).
German adjectives take different sets of endings in different circumstances. Essentially, the adjectives must provide case, gender and number information if the articles do not. This table lists the various endings, in order masculine, feminine, neuter, plural, for the different inflection cases.
Singular forms simply remove the final s or, in the case of -ese endings, are the same as the plural forms. The ending -men has feminine equivalent -women (e.g. Irishman , Scotswoman ). The French terminations -ois / -ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine ; adding e ( -oise / -aise ) makes them singular feminine; es ( -oises ...
The nouns of the German language have several properties, some unique. As in many related Indo-European languages, German nouns possess a grammatical gender; the three genders are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Words for objects without obvious masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock' can be masculine, feminine, or neuter.
Singular masculine and neuter nouns of the strong declension in the genitive case are marked with -(e)s. Generally, one-syllable nouns favour the -es ending, and it is obligatory with nouns ending with a sibilant such as s or z. Otherwise, a simple -s ending is usual. Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected:
They are also the source of many modern German weak nouns. The masculine nominative singular ending cannot be reconstructed with confidence, as both North and East Germanic reflect a rather different ending. Old Norse -i and Gothic -a can conceivably come from an ending *-ē, but the source of such an ending is unknown.