TO: Lesson - 4th Declension Nouns - Endings
4th Declension Nouns - Endings
Below are the endings charts for 4th declension nouns. Take time to notice a few things while learning these new endings:
- What features from earlier declensions still appear for 4th declension?
- Are there any similarities between 3rd and 4th declension endings? Between 2nd declension and 4th declension?
- What letter is most commonly used in the inflections for the 4th declension?
| Masculine/Feminine | Neuter | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural |
| Nominative | us | us | u | ua |
| Genitive | us | uum | us | uum |
| Dative | ui | ibus | u | ibus |
| Accusative | um | us | u | ua |
| Ablative | u | ibus | u | ibus |
| Vocative | us | us | u | ua |
Nota Bene
- Note the following features which 4th declension nouns share with other declensions:
- Masculine and Feminine accusative singular ends in -m
- Ablative singular is a single vowel: -u
- Dative and Ablative plural are the same: -ibus
- Neuter Nominative and Accusative (both singular and plural) are identical
- Neuter Nominative and Accusative plural both end in -a
- Note the following unique features for 4th declension:
- Neuter singular - every ending is -u, except for genitive singular which is -us. This is more like an English noun, which does not change form, except for the possessive (for example: in English, the noun dog is used as both the subject and object form, only changing in form when being used as the possessive: dog's)
- Because of the repeated use of -u, 4th declension neuter does not follow neuter rule 3: genitive, dative and ablative forms are the same for neuter nouns as their non-neuter counterpart.