Salute, Jonathan!/Grammar (nouns)

Occidental does not have a single obligatory ending for nouns, as is often the case in constructed languages.

Examples: castelle (castle), benedition (blessing/benediction), nebul (cloud).

The -e neutral final vowel is extremely common and used for many reasons, such as:

To show that the word is a noun, and not another type of word such as an adjective. Examples: scrit (written) vs. scrite (something written), vocal (vocal) vs. vocale (vowel), mortal (mortal), mortale (a mortal).

There is no grammatical gender, in the same way as in English. Nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter according to their meaning.

The gender can be indicated in names for entities: -o for masculine, and -a for feminine:

Maritos e maritas deve sempre dir li veritá, ne ver? - Husbands and wives should always tell the truth, right?

The -o ending is often used in a neutral sense, especially when adding an -e would change the pronunciation of the preceding consonant:

However, the -s plural can be added without an -e- in between if one wants to use a plural form that can only be interpreted as neuter.

It ne es un surprise que mi amics volet que yo intra li asil. - It is no surprise that my friends wanted me to enter the asylum.