Appendix:Hindi nouns

Hindi nouns can have masculine or feminine genders and take on three cases and two numbers.

Gender
There are two genders: masculine and feminine. Often, these are inherited from Sanskrit, with the neuter lost and changed to either of the two. Here are some examples of genders:



Cases
The three cases are:


 * Direct case - usually used as the subject of the sentence
 * Oblique case - used when the word isn't the "focus" of the sentence, as in a prepositional phrase
 * Vocative case - used when calling people or animals, or even things and abstract entities

Number
The only two numbers are singular and plural. Since nearly all Hindi nouns are countable, constructions like are common and standardized.

Types
There are several classes of Hindi nouns, sorted by gender and stem.

ā-stem
Words ending in -ā are quite common. An example is :

other-stem
Words ending in consonants, or any other vowel, fall in the other category. An example is :

i, ī, and iyā-stem
Words with this stem are very common. An example is :

other-stem
Feminine words ending in other stems are somewhat common. An example is :