A strong noun is a phenomenon of more

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

like Icelandic, and also of Irish, marked in each by case or number markings.

Icelandic

In the

Icelandic language Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national languag ...

, a strong noun is one that falls into one of four categories, depending on the endings of the ''characteristic cases'', i.e. the nominative and genitive singular and the nominative plural. For masculines this gives the following four-way split to be counted as strong: :The latter two cases end in ''-s'' and ''-ar''. :The latter two cases end in ''-s or -ar'' and ''-ir''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' and ''-ir''. :Irregular but not a

weak noun Weak nouns are nouns that follow a weak inflection paradigm, in contrast with strong nouns. They are present in several Germanic languages. English Modern English has only two vestiges of the weak noun inflection in common use: ''ox'', whose pl ...

. For feminines this looks like: :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' or ''-r'' and ''-ar''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' and ''-ir''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' or ''-ur'' and ''-ur'' or ''-r''. :Irregular but not a

. Most neuters are strong, and end in ''-s'' in the genitive singular with the exception of ''fé'', genitive ''fjár''. Although strong neuters technically only belong to one category, it is a diverse group, so about a dozen paradigms are necessary to account for varieties and exceptions. The weak neuters are so few, that a list suffices, to be found on the page for weak nouns.

Irish

In the

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

, a strong noun is one in which a noun maintains the same form of the plural in all cases, especially both the

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

and

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

plurals. The strong-noun endings are ''-(a)í'', ''-ta/-te'', ''-the'', ''-(e)acha'', and ''(e)anna''. Certain other nouns that take plain ''-a'' or ''-e'' may be strong if the nominative and genitive plural are the same. All nouns ending in vowels in Irish are considered strong.

Bibliography

* {{lexical categories, state=collapsed Icelandic language Nouns by type

Icelandic

Irish

See also

Bibliography