Engl401 | Lessons | Feminine Weak Nouns

You are here: English 401 > Lessons > Lesson 6 > Feminine Weak Nouns

Feminine Weak Nouns

The only reason not to have learned the feminine weak nouns at the same time as the masculine and neuter weak nouns (Lesson 4) was that at that time you had yet to learn the demonstratives that go with them--they're the same demonstratives as the ones that go with the feminine strong nouns, which you learned in Lesson 5. So essentially this page puts together two things that you already know.

The weak feminine nouns follow this pattern:

Weak Feminine Noun *sunne*
sunne	Singular	Plural
Nominative	seo sunne	þá sunnan
Accusative	þá sunnan	þá sunnan
Genitive	þære sunnan	þára sunnena
Dative	þære sunnan	þæm sunnum

Things to notice:

The nominative singular has an -e ending.
The demonstratives show that it's feminine.
Otherwise, it's exactly like the declension of a weak masculine noun.

There are large numbers of masculine and feminine weak nouns, but only two neuter weak nouns, the words for ear (eare) and eye (eage).

Return to Lesson 6

Contact: Murray McGillivray at mmcgilli@acs.ucalgary.ca or the Listserv at mailto:eg401-m@acs.ucalgary.ca