A strong noun is a phenomenon of more

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

Germanic languages like Icelandic, and also of

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

, marked in each by case or number markings.

Icelandic

In the Icelandic language, 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 ...

. 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 Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and wa ...

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