Nouns: Gender and Declension

01

Telling the Gender

You can usually tell the gender from the dictionary (nominative) ending:

• Masculine typically ends in -as, -is, -ys, -us: vyras (man), brolis (brother), arklys (horse), sūnus (son).
• Feminine typically ends in -a, -ė, and a group in -is: knyga (book), gatvė (street), moteris (woman).

Gender matters because adjectives, numbers and many pronouns must match it, so the ending you learn with the noun is echoed across the whole phrase.

02

What "Declension" Means

To decline a noun is to run it through its case endings - Lithuanian has seven cases. The ending changes, the meaning of the root stays. Here is one masculine noun, vyras (man), through all seven:

• Nominative vyras - the man (subject)
• Genitive vyro - of the man
• Dative vyrui - to/for the man
• Accusative vyrą - the man (object)
• Instrumental vyru - with/by the man
• Locative vyre - in the man
• Vocative vyre - (calling) man!

Two remarks on that list. The last two forms happen to be spelled alike for this particular noun; for most nouns they are quite different - knygoje "in the book" against knyga "book!". And "in the man" is there only to complete the pattern: the locative really belongs to places and things, as in mieste (in the city) or knygoje (in the book).

• Vyras dirba.

  The man works.

• Matau vyrą.

  I see the man.

• Tai vyro knyga.

  That is the man's book.

03

The Declension Patterns

Nouns fall into a handful of patterns according to their ending. You do not need the textbook numbers, but it helps to notice the families and their genitive (the form that best reveals the pattern):

• -as: vyras → vyro (masculine)
• -is: brolis → brolio (masculine)
• -a: knyga → knygos (feminine)
• -ė: gatvė → gatvės (feminine)
• -us: sūnus → sūnaus (masculine)
• -is (the feminine type): moteris → moteries

04

No "a" or "the"

Because Lithuanian has no articles, one noun form serves where English needs "a" or "the"; the context, word order and emphasis carry the difference:

• Matau namą.

  I see a house. / I see the house.

• Namas didelis.

  The house is big.

If you really must mark "this/that particular one", you reach for a demonstrative (tas namas "that house") rather than an article.

05

Everything Around the Noun Agrees

Gender and case do not stop at the noun. Adjectives, numbers, demonstratives and many pronouns all take endings that match it, so a noun phrase moves as a single agreeing block:

• geras vyras

  a good man (both masculine).

• ta gera knyga

  that good book (all feminine).

• du broliai

  two brothers (number agrees in gender).

This agreement is the thread that ties Lithuanian sentences together, so the gender you learn with each noun pays off in every phrase you build.

06

Stress Can Move

One quirk worth knowing early: the stress can jump from one syllable to another as a noun is declined, and the stressed vowel itself can be said with a different pitch - falling in one form, rising in another. This does not change the spelling you learn, but it explains why the same word can sound a little different in different forms. Listen and imitate rather than trying to predict it - the patterns are real but take time to feel.