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Nearly every noun, whether native or borrowed, is declined according to one of the six declensions; however, transcriptions of foreign anthroponyms and toponyms are indeclinable whenever they do not end in one of the typical endings of the declensions. See e.g. toponyms such as ''Peru'' "Peru", ''Konggo'' "Congo", or ''Wanwátu'' "Vanuatu". | Nearly every noun, whether native or borrowed, is declined according to one of the six declensions; however, transcriptions of foreign anthroponyms and toponyms are indeclinable whenever they do not end in one of the typical endings of the declensions. See e.g. toponyms such as ''Peru'' "Peru", ''Konggo'' "Congo", or ''Wanwátu'' "Vanuatu". | ||
While the declensions are generally tied to grammatical gender, this is sometimes overridden by natural gender. Most notably, the agent noun-forming suffixes ''-éc'' and ''-tél'' form first declension nouns that can take either masculine or feminine concord (articles and adjectives) depending on the actual referent; many nouns which refer to humans obey such rules no matter which declension they belong to (as e.g. ''hulamá'' "scientist"). In some cases, neuter gender is an option too, as with ''nesfertél'', traditionally either masculine or feminine for "messenger", nowadays frequently used as a neuter noun with the meaning of "messenger, chat program", a calque from English<ref>See also, for a similar process where grammatical gender is productively used in semantic loans, ''robbán'', an originally Arabic loan which means "navigator" as a masculine first declension noun, but in recent decades has gotten the new meaning (calqued from English) of "web browser" as a neuter third declension noun. In this case, the feminine form (female navigator) is different, ''robbánetá''.</ref>. | While the declensions are generally tied to grammatical gender, this is sometimes overridden by natural gender. Most notably, the agent noun-forming suffixes ''-éc'' and ''-tél'' are epicene and form first declension nouns that can take either masculine or feminine concord (articles and adjectives) depending on the actual referent; many nouns which refer to humans obey such rules no matter which declension they belong to (as e.g. ''hulamá'' "scientist"). In some cases, neuter gender is an option too, as with ''nesfertél'', traditionally either masculine or feminine for "messenger", nowadays frequently used as a neuter noun with the meaning of "messenger, chat program", a calque from English<ref>See also, for a similar process where grammatical gender is productively used in semantic loans, ''robbán'', an originally Arabic loan which means "navigator" as a masculine first declension noun, but in recent decades has gotten the new meaning (calqued from English) of "web browser" as a neuter third declension noun. In this case, the feminine form (female navigator) is different, ''robbánetá''.</ref>. Other nouns that denote people, especially if borrowed, are also epicene nouns, such as ''hartís'' (citizen (the ending only is borrowed)), ''kosmonawt'' (astronaut), ''pangk'' (punk), ''syahír'' (poet); in some dialects, inherited ''helbart'' (child) is used as epicene too (but the standard has the feminine form ''helbartá''). A select number of inherited nouns do not refer to people but have a different grammatical gender than the one of its declension, most notably ''napat'' (night) and the plurale tantum ''haréni'' (mind), which are feminine first declension nouns. | ||
====1st declension (masculine)==== | ====1st declension (masculine)==== | ||