Slovak declension

The Slovak language, like most Slavic languages and Latin, is an inflected language, meaning that the endings (and sometimes also the stems) of most words (nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals) change depending on the given combination of the grammatical gender, the grammatical number and the grammatical case of the particular word in the particular sentence:

a) Gender: There are four grammatical genders in Slovak language: animate masculine, inanimate masculine, feminine and neuter. In popular description, the first two genders are often covered under common masculine gender. Almost all Slovak nouns and adjectives, as well as some pronouns and numerals can be categorized into one of these genders. Exceptions are pluralia tantum (Vianoce - Christmas, though there are rules for deriving the gender) and words that are drifting into other gender and are currently in the neuter (knieža - Fürst), and masculine animals that are animate in singular and mostly inanimate in plural.

b) Number: Like in English, Slovak has singular and plural nouns. Morphological traces of the ancient Indo-European dual number remain, but are not a separate grammar category anymore. A particular case is associated with three distinct groups of numerals associated with nouns:

c) Morphological cases:

There is also a different form of morphological vocative emerging in spoken language, used with some familiar forms of personal names (Paľo - Pali, Jano, Jana - Jani, Zuza - Zuzi) and familiar forms of kinship words, such as mama - mami (mum, mother), oco - oci (dad, father), tata, tato - tati (dad, daddy), baba, babka - babi (gran, granny, grandmother). This usage is very similar to the "new Russian vocative" (Маш', Петь', мам'), but it is not accepted into standardised codified language. This could have developed out of proper names that were formed using the Hungarian diminutive suffix -i and that are used in spoken Slovak, and therefore is often homonymous with nominative (semi-)diminutive forms of the names. Other possibility is influence of Czech (from common bllingual TV during Czechoslovakia) where Jani/Zuzi as well as mami/tati/babi is part of Common Czech.

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