Chapter 3 - The Nouns - Generalities

• Nouns, along with verbs, are one of the most important elements of a sentence. They determine the agreements within the sentence.

• Unlike in English, Somali nouns (or "substantives") are divided into two genders: masculine and feminine.

• Nouns indicate number: singular and plural. The plural is often marked by adding a suffix to the end of the singular noun.

• Nouns distinguish grammatical cases: absolutive, nominative, genitive, and vocative.

• Some nouns also have a feature called "gender polarity," where certain nouns have one grammatical gender in the singular and another in the plural, thus indicating that grammatical gender is distinct from biological sex.

 Gender 

The presence of the definite article indicates the gender of nouns. The distribution between masculine and feminine gender does not follow any particular rule and is not always obvious, though a very small number of rules can be identified for recognizing them.

Thus, singular nouns denoting male persons (father, son, uncle, teacher, male animal...) are masculine, while singular nouns denoting female persons (mother, daughter, aunt, teacher, female animal,...) are feminine, with rare exceptions.

Phonetically, singular nouns ending in the sounds o, i, ad are generally feminine: qaaddo = spoon, middi = knife, bisad = cat; singular nouns ending in the sound e are generally masculine: fure = key, tuke = crow.

However, many nouns end in consonants, so it is advised to learn them with their definite suffix: muuska = the banana (masc.), qofka = the person (masc.), saabuunta = the soap (fem.), etc.

 Number 

Nouns form their plurals in several ways, including reduplication. Many nouns have gender polarity, whereby they change gender in the plural, for example: buugga (= the book) is masculine in the singular, but buugagta (= the books) is feminine in the plural; naagta (= the woman) is feminine in the singular, but naagaha (= the women) is masculine in the plural.

The Nominative

The subject of a sentence is in the nominative case. In this case, the article suffix takes the ending -u. If the subject of a sentence consists of several nouns, only the last noun takes the nominative ending on the article.

If there is no article suffix, the nominative case is marked by a change in tone, although this is not marked in the spelling.

Feminine nouns that do not take modifiers and end in a consonant take the suffix -i in the nominative case without an article.

The Genitive

The genitive case is generally marked by a change in tone.

Some feminine nouns take an ending: -eed, -aad or -od depending on the final consonant of the nominal root.

The Vocative

The vocative case is indicated either by a change in tone or by suffixes: -ow (masc. sing.), -ohow (masc. plur.), -eey/-aay/-ooy (fem. sing.) or -yahay (fem. plur.).