Slovak declension


, like most Slavic languages and Latin, is an inflected language, meaning that the endings of most words 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: 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, words that are drifting into another gender and are currently neuter, 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:
  • 1 – nominative case singular, for example jeden dub
  • 2, 3, 4 – nominative case plural, for example dva duby
  • 0, 5 and more – genitive case plural, for example päť dubov
c) Morphological cases:
  • the nominative case = the subject; the basic form of the word; answers the question Who / What; for example father, fathers
  • the genitive case =
  • * in English "of x" or "x's"; answers the questions Of whom / Of what; for example father's, fathers' ;
  • * is used after the prepositions bez, blízko, do, doprostred, mimo, miesto, okolo, od, podľa, pomimo, pomocou, pozdĺž, u, uprostred, vedľa, vnútri, vyše, z, *za
  • the dative case =
  • * in English "to x"; answers the question To whom / To what; for example to the father, to the fathers ;
  • * is used after the prepositions k, kvôli, napriek, naproti, oproti ), voči
  • the accusative case =
  • * the direct object; answers the question Whom / What; for example father, fathers ;
  • * is used after the prepositions: cez, *medzi, *na, *nad, *po, *o, *pod, pre, *pred, *v, vzhľadom na, *za
  • the locative case = used after the prepositions *na, *po, *o, pri, *v
  • the instrumental case =
  • * in English "by x"; answers the question By whom / By what; for example by the father;
  • * is used after the prepositions: *medzi, *nad, *pod, *pred, s, *za
  • The vocative case is not morphologically marked anymore in modern Slovak. Today the vocative is realised by the nominative case, just like in English, German and many other languages. However, the ancient vocative declensions have survived in some words, some examples: syn – V: synku, brat, chlapec, švagor – V: švagre or N, kmotor, chlap – V: chlape, priateľ V: priateľu or N, pán, majster, boh – V: bože, mama and was retrofitted to some more words, like šéf – V: šéfe. There is a dispute among some Slovak linguists whether to include the vocative into the categories grammar, but with declension equal to the nominative, or to unify it with the nominative case category. The morphological vocative is used only for the above restricted number of words and in addition only in some contexts. Note however that there is no dispute that the syntactic vocative exists in Slovak. Slovak schools have been teaching for at least 30 years that there is no grammar category of vocative anymore in use, however, the use of the vocative case in the past is often mentioned. The Slovak Encyclopedia of Linguistics explicitly says: the vocative is nowadays replaced by the nominative. However, the Slovak National Corpus explicitly includes vocative as a separate case in the morphological analysis and corpus tagset.
There is also a different form of morphological vocative emerging in spoken language, used with some familiar forms of personal names and familiar forms of kinship words, such as mama – mami, oco – oci, tata, tato – tati, baba, babka – babi. This usage is very similar to the "new Russian vocative", 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 diminutive forms of the names. Another possibility is influence from Czech, where Jani / Zuzi as well as mami / tati / babi is part of Common Czech.

Legend

  • "ends in" in the following refers to the ending in the nominative singular, unless stated differently;
  • Soft consonants are: all consonants with the diacritic mark ˇ + c, dz, j. Hard and neutral consonants are all the remaining consonants;
  • For masculine nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals it is necessary to distinguish between animate and inanimate ones. An animate noun is a person and an inanimate noun is any other noun. Animals are usually viewed as persons only in sg. For the animate nouns, the G is identical with the A, and for the inanimate nouns, the N is identical with the A. Animate/Inanimate adjectives, pronouns and numerals are those referring to an animate/inanimate noun respectively ;
  • sg = singular, pl = plural;
  • N, G, D, A, L, I are abbreviations of grammatical cases.

    Nouns

For each gender, there are four basic declension paradigms.
Note that many nouns have different endings than those of the paradigms in one or more grammatical cases. They are neither defined, nor listed in the following. The complete number of different paradigms for nouns is somewhere around 200.
A very small number of foreign nouns are not declined.

The Masculine Gender

There is also a 5th paradigm for foreign nouns ending in.-i, -y, -e, -í, -é, -ě, -ä and foreign personal names ending in -ü, -ö, which goes as follows:
  • Sg: N: pony, G: ponyho, D: ponymu, A: ponyho, L and I: ponym;
  • Pl: like hrdina.
Masculine animal nouns are declined like chlap in the singular, but in plural usually like dub or like stroj.
Notes on chlap:
  • For the nouns ending in a vowel the vowel is not part of the stem, but the ending in N sg: for example dedo has G / D sg... deda / dedovi etc.
  • many nouns lose an e / o / i from the stem in all cases except N sg ;
  • in some short nouns, the -e- changes its position in all cases except N sg ;
  • some nouns ending in -k / -ch change their final /k/ or /ch/ into /c/ and /s/, respectively in N pl ;
  • words ending in -h use the N pl ending for hrdina instead
  • most Latin and Greek nouns ending in -us, -as, -es lose it in all cases except N sg.
Notes on hrdina:
Notes on dub:
  • many nouns lose e / o / i / í / / á from the stem in all cases except N sg and A sg
  • some Greek and Latin nouns in -us, -es, -os lose the -us / -es / -os in all cases except N sg and A sg ;
  • some Slovak words lose the acute or the i / u from a diphthong in all cases except N sg and A sg ;
  • in G sg, inanimate masculine nouns declined by the pattern dub have the ending of either -a or -u. There is no quick rule to tell which noun uses which ending.
  • in G pl, some nouns change the a / e / i / o / u in the stem to á / / í / ô / ú or in some cases to ia / iu, unless the rhythmical rule prevents it, i.e. the preceding syllable in the stem already contains a vowel with an acute or a diphthong ;
  • in L sg, nouns ending in g / k / h have -u rather than -e.
Notes on stroj:
  • many nouns lose the e / o / i / í / / á in all cases except N sg and A sg ;
  • some nouns lose the acute or the i/u from a diphthong in all cases except N sg and A sg ;
  • in G pl, geographical names in pl. change the a / e / i / o / u in the stem to á / é / í / ó / ú or in some cases to ia / / iu / ô in the G pl, unless the rhythmical rule prevents it, i.e. the preceding syllable in the stem already contains an acute or a diphthong.

    The Feminine Gender

There is also a 5th paradigm for feminine nouns ending in -ná or -ovná, where the singular and N pl and A pl are like pekná and the remaining plural is like žena. In the G pl, there are changes in the stem: if the noun ends in -vowel + ná, then this vowel receives an acute, but otherwise -- is inserted.
There is also a 6th paradigm for the feminine nouns ending in -ea, which goes like žena, except that D sg and Lsg are idei, and G pl is ideí without change in the stem.
Notes on žena:
  • The following nouns are declined like ulica instead of žena: večera, rozopra, konopa, Hybe and dvere;
  • In the G pl of some nouns, an / e / o / á / ô is inserted in the last syllable of the stem ;
  • In the G pl of some nouns, in the last syllable of the stem the a / i / y / u / ä / e / o / syllabic r / syllabic l is changed into á / í / ý / ú / ia / / ô / ŕ / ĺ respectively.
Notes on ulica:
  • In the G pl of some nouns is inserted ;
  • In the G pl of some nouns, in the last syllable of the stem the a / i / y / u / e / o / syllabic r is changed into á / í / ý / ú / / ô / ŕ respectively.
Notes on dlaň:
  • The following nouns are declined like dlaň, not like kosť: obec, päsť, čeľusť;
  • The following feminine nouns are not declined like dlaň, but like kosť: jar, zver, chuť, ortuť, pamäť, smrť, pleť, sneť, rukoväť, smeť, púť, spleť, svojeť, reč, seč, meď, soľ, hluš, myš, voš, lož, bel, Sereď, Sibír, Budapešť, Bukurešť, Lešť and a few other nouns. The words myseľ, chuť, raž, tvár, hneď can be declined like dlaň or like kosť in the singular, but only like dlaň in the plural. The word hrsť is declined like dlaň in the singular, but like kosť in the plural. The word pamäť is declined like kosť when it refers to human memory, but like dlaň when it refers to computer memory;
  • most nouns in -eň lose -e- in all cases except N sg and A sg.
Notes on kosť:
  • see the first two notes under dlaň;
  • some nouns lose -e-/-o- in all cases except N sg and A sg .