Salute, Jonathan!/Grammar (nouns)

No single obligatory ending for 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 common -e ending

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).

No grammatical gender

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:

Veni, amicos, noi have coses a far. - Come, friends, we have things to do.

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.

Deriving adjectives from nouns

For the most part, the final vowel in a noun is not part of the root itself, and when the ending is not obligatory, it and disappears when adding endings to form adjectives.

angel (angel): angelic
metall/e (metal): metallic
córpor/e (body): corporal
témpor/e (time): temporal

In many cases, the derived adjectives are more familiar to English speakers than the original nouns themselves, as is the case with the words corporal and temporal.

Nouns ending in -u and -a

Most nouns ending in -u and a few ending in -a do not lose this vowel when adjectives are formed using them. The -a nouns in this case are almost entirely from Greek, and end in -ma.

usu (use): usual
spíritu (spirit): spiritual
sistema (system): sistematic
aqua (water): aquatic