Nouns: Gender, Number, and the First and Second Declensions

A noun names something: a person, a place, a thing, an idea. English nouns barely change. "Gift" becomes "gifts" and that is about it. Greek nouns change their endings all the time, and the endings carry information English puts into word order and little words like "of" and "to." This lesson starts with the two simplest pieces of that information, gender and number, then builds the full tables for five model nouns. Learn these five well and you can decline hundreds of others.

Gender

Every Greek noun has a gender: masculine, feminine or neuter (Smyth, section 196). For people and many animals, gender follows sex. ὁ ἄνθρωπος [AN-thrō-pos] human being, used for men and for mixed groups, is masculine. A word for a woman, such as ἡ ἀδελφή [a-del-PHĒ] sister, is feminine.

For things, gender is grammatical. It belongs to the word, not to the thing. A gift is neuter (τὸ δῶρον), a word is masculine (ὁ λόγος), a land is feminine (ἡ χώρα). Nothing about a gift is neuter and nothing about a word is male. German and French work the same way, and Smyth draws the same comparison. Gender matters because other words agree with it: "the," adjectives and pronouns all change their form to match the noun (lessons 7 and 10).

Smyth (section 199) gives a few rules of thumb for things that have no sex:

• Names of most countries, islands, cities and trees are feminine: ἡ νῆσος island, ἡ χώρα land.
• Most abstract words, naming a quality or condition, are feminine: ἡ τιμή honor, ἡ σοφία wisdom, ἡ ἀρετή excellence.
• Small things named with the ending -ιον are neuter, even people: τὸ παιδίον little child. So are the names of letters: τὸ ἄλφα.

How a dictionary shows gender

Dictionaries mark gender with the Greek word for "the," which has a different form for each gender. You will learn all its forms in lesson 7. For now, learn these three:

Learn every new noun with its article: not just λόγος, but ὁ λόγος. It costs one syllable and saves endless confusion later.

Number

English has singular (one) and plural (more than one). Greek has these and also a dual, for exactly two of something, especially natural pairs like eyes or hands (Smyth, section 195). The dual is rare in Attic prose, and the plural can be used for two instead. Smyth gives τὼ ὀφθαλμώ, "the two eyes." This course shows the dual only in notes. You will meet it in Homer and Plato, and a commentary will point it out.

Stems and endings

A Greek noun is a stem plus an ending (Smyth, section 191). The stem carries the meaning and stays put. The ending changes.

(Strictly, Smyth treats the stem as λογο-, with the vowel ο merging into the endings. For learning, splitting it as λογ- plus -ος is simpler and gives the same results.)

Greek nouns fall into three families, called declensions, according to their stems (Smyth, section 204). The first declension has stems in α. The second has stems in ο. The third has stems ending in a consonant or in ι or υ, and gets its own lesson (14). This lesson and the next cover the first two, which are the most regular.

Step one: the nominative

The form a dictionary gives you is the nominative, the form used for the subject of a sentence, the one doing the action. Lesson 6 covers the other forms and what they do. Start with the nominative singular and plural of the five model nouns.

Three patterns jump out:

• First declension nouns that end in -α or -η are feminine, and their plural ends in -αι.
• Second declension nouns in -ος are usually masculine, with plural -οι.
• Second declension nouns in -ον are neuter, with plural -α.

Look at the accents. χώρα becomes χῶραι because final -αι counts as short for accent (lesson 3, Smyth, section 169). A long accented penult before a short ultima must take the circumflex. In θάλατται the accent can stay on the antepenult for the same reason. In δῶρα the final α of a neuter plural is short, so the circumflex stays.

The full paradigms

Greek has five cases, five slots in each number. Here they are in the traditional order used in Britain and North America: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative (Smyth, section 201). For now, take the English labels as rough guides. Lesson 6 explains each case properly.

• Nominative: the subject. "The land is large."
• Genitive: "of." "The edge of the land."
• Dative: "to, for, with, by." "I give it to the land."
• Accusative: the direct object. "I see the land."
• Vocative: calling someone. "O land!"

First declension: χώρα, τιμή, θάλαττα

Notice what is the same across all three. The plural endings are identical: -αι, -ῶν, -αις, -ας, -αι. Every first declension genitive plural has a circumflex on -ῶν (Smyth, section 208). The dative singular always has the iota subscript. The differences are all in the singular, and they follow simple rules.

Why three types? The α and η rules

Smyth (sections 217 to 219) gives the rules. They depend on the letter before the ending.

Two quick checks help you tell the types apart in a dictionary. If the genitive is listed as -ας, the α stays through the whole singular, and in the nominative it is usually long (Smyth, section 217 d, notes exceptions such as μοῖρα, fate). If the genitive is -ης and the nominative ends in -α, the α is short. The accent also helps: θάλαττα can have its accent on the antepenult only because its final α is short (lesson 3).

Why does Attic keep α after ε, ι, ρ when it uses η elsewhere? Early Greek had long α everywhere. Attic and Ionic changed most of those long α sounds to η, but Attic kept α after ε, ι and ρ (Smyth, sections 30 and 31). Ionic went further and changed them too. So Herodotus, who wrote Ionic, has χώρη and ἡμέρη where Plato has χώρα and ἡμέρα. Doric and Aeolic kept the old α even more widely: Doric has τιμά for τιμή. You will see these forms when you read Homer, whose language is mostly Ionic.

Attic -ττ- against -σσ-

The Attic word for sea is θάλαττα. Most other dialects, including Ionic, the Koine of the Hellenistic world and modern Greek, have θάλασσα. The same split shows up in γλῶττα / γλῶσσα tongue, πράττω / πράσσω I do, and the number four, τέτταρες / τέσσαρες (lesson 4). Some Attic writers, notably the tragedians and Thucydides, used -σσ- forms too. This course uses -ττ- because that is the everyday Attic of Plato, Xenophon and the orators. When you meet θάλασσα in Homer or in a dictionary entry, it is the same word.

Second declension: λόγος and δῶρον

The masculine and neuter differ in only three places in each number: the nominative, accusative and vocative. The genitive and dative are identical. And the neuter follows a rule that holds for every neuter noun in Greek, in every declension: its nominative, accusative and vocative are always the same, and in the plural they always end in short -α (Smyth, sections 202 and 204).

Watch the accent on δῶρον. Where the ending is long (-ου, -ῳ, -ων, -οις), the circumflex on the penult becomes an acute. Where it is short (-ον, -α), the circumflex stays. That is the rule from lesson 3 doing its job.

Feminine nouns in -ος

A handful of second declension nouns in -ος are feminine. They decline exactly like λόγος. Only their article shows the difference (Smyth, sections 228 and 232). The common ones: ἡ ὁδός road, ἡ νῆσος island, ἡ βίβλος book, ἡ νόσος disease, ἡ ψῆφος pebble, vote. So a dictionary entry like "νῆσος, -ου, ἡ" tells you to use the λόγος endings but feminine agreement.

Reading a dictionary entry

Greek dictionaries list a noun as nominative, then the genitive ending, then the article. For example:

• χώρα, -ας, ἡ: land, country
• τιμή, -ῆς, ἡ: honor
• θάλαττα, -ης, ἡ: sea
• λόγος, -ου, ὁ: word
• δῶρον, -ου, τό: gift

The genitive tells you the declension and, for first declension nouns, which singular type. The article tells you the gender. For the first two declensions you could guess the genitive from the nominative most of the time. For the third declension you cannot, and that is why dictionaries give it every time (lesson 14).

Vocabulary for this lesson