Nouns and Declensions

Articles: There are no articles in Slevško, i.e. no equivalent words for "the" and "a".

Nouns:

Nouns are grouped into three genders, Feminine (Fem.), Masculine (Masc.) and Neuter (Neut.)

In the singular and nominative case, masculine nouns end in a consonant, feminine nouns end in 'a' or 'e' and neuter nouns end in 'o' or 'é'.

There are four noun declensions; Hard, Middle, Soft and Animate. The declension that a noun is in depends upon the last letter of the noun stem as follows.

Declension Final letter of Stem Examples

Hard b, g, h, k, p, t nočta (night), tob (day), mešto (bridge)

Middle č, ch, d, j, s, š,ź oč (eye), sovja (girl, maiden),

Soft f, l, m, n, r, v, z plevé (story), svare (scene), sral (flight)

Animate (any consonant) zadza (women), pred (man).

Irregular nouns There are many nouns which don’t have the typical endings of NOM singular form. For example, SYSTEMA ( system) which is in the soft feminine declension although it has an -a suffix typical of feminine nouns in the hard and middle declensions rather than the -e suffix of most soft declension feminine nouns. Irregular nouns follow the declension for all the other cases.

Cases: There are eight noun cases as follows:

NOM (nominative); The subject noun in a sentence; The cat sat on the mat. VOC (vocative); The noun being addressed, Oh cat come! ACC (accusative), the noun being acted upon, the object in a sentence. The cat sat on the mat. GEN (genitive), The noun in possession of another noun; The cat’s whiskers. ABL (ablative), The noun that is the origin of another noun, (from x); From the cat’s basket. DAT (dative), (to/for x); Give the ball to the cat. LOC (locative), in/with/at x; In the cat’s cradle. INS (instrumental), Indicates the noun being used to perform an action; Dry the cat with a towel.

Declension Paradigms: