# Indeclinable nouns, adjectives in languages with declension - only Slavic languages?



## Encolpius

Good morning ladies & gentlemen, I found it always strange why some nouns and adjectives (of foreigin origin)  are not declined in Czech, Russian or Polish. In Hungarian even the most bizarre noun or adjective is declined. So I never understood why it is like that in Slavic languages. I wonder if all Slavic languages have that phenomenon, do you know the reason? Do you know about other languages with this phenomenon, like Finnish, Turkish? Thank you for your cooperation. Encolpius from Prague


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Good morning ladies & gentlemen, I found it always strange why some nouns and adjectives (of foreigin origin) are not declined in Czech, Russian or Polish. In Hungarian even the most bizarre noun or adjective is declined.


Hungarian is basically agglutinative, and you can attach those chains of affixes to anything. Russian doesn't have that luxury - it has inflections for grammatical forms. And the key trouble is that the zero nominative singular inflection (which is characteristic for the 2nd and 3rd declension paradigms) necessarily demands that the word must end in a consonant. As a result, there is a possibility that some words won't fit into any of the declension paradigms in their originally transcribed phonetic forms. There are several possible ways out of that situation:
1. Don't decline anything which doesn't fit. That's basically where Standard Russian stands. It also doesn't decline some nouns which could've been declined, for various reasons (the first being that in Russian declension is partly connected to gender, but it's a separate topic anyway).
2. Modify the noun, making it fit by force, so to speak.
2a. Use the oblique case forms as if the noun had some different (but close or morphologically related) phonetic shape in the nominative case. That's what used to happen in spoken Russian (and still occurs in it to some extent).
2b. Modify the noun starting from the nominative form, alternating its relevant part and/or attaching some nominative inflections. That's how Clinton turns into Klintonas in Lithuanian. Still, the very Lithuanian leaves many words indeclinable, in the "Slavic" fashion (which is also a partial answer to your question).
I really wouldn't expect that situation from strongly agglutinative languages, like Finnish or Turkish, especially considering that while in the Slavic languages prepositions and grammatical cases largely overlap (so Bulgarian managed to get rid of the noun case forms whatsoever!), it isn't so in Turkish or Finnish.


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## jazyk

Awwal12 said:


> I really wouldn't expect that situation from strongly agglutinative languages, like Finnish or Turkish,


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## Perseas

In Greek there are few very common adjectives that remain undeclined like μοβ [móv], μπεζ [béz], μπλε [blé], πορτοκαλί [portokalí] (mauve, beige, bleu, orange).
Nowadays we usually don't hellenize foreign names, so Clinton is Κλίντον and undeclined. On the contrary in the past, Newton had turned into Νεύτων [néfton] and it was/is declined like Πλάτων.


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## Awwal12

P.S.: What I'd like to point out (and haven't stated quite clear in my previous post) is that if a language leaves some words indeclinable out of necessity, it also potentially can leave some words indeclinable for other reasons too (like Russian or Czech does - because, obviously, there are no morphological reasons not to decline the foreign neuter words ending in -e  in Russian, and yet they aren't declined as well).


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## Olaszinhok

As for Italian, we don't even make a foreign noun plural:_ il bar - i bar  _the bar _-_ (the) bars, we just change the definite masculine article (bar is masculine in Italian).


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## jazyk

Awwal12 said:


> Still, the very Lithuanian leaves many words indeclinable, in the "Slavic" fashion


There 's no Slavic fashion. Czech has only a handful of indeclinable nouns, whereas Polish and Russian have quite a few. In Czech video, for example, is declined, in Polish it is not, even though it could be.


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## ahvalj

jazyk said:


> In Czech video, for example, is declined, in Polish it is not, even though it could be.


Yes and no. Strictly speaking, a Slavic word shouldn't have endings after a vowel, so _videa, videu_ etc. are artificial creations. On the other hand the Polish type with indeclined _muzeum_ in the singular versus _muzea, muzeów_ etc. in the plural is twice artificial. On the third hand, this type with endings after vowels is attested since the very first Slavic texts (Old Church Slavonic _Moüsei, Moüsea, Moüseovi…_), so people weren't sensitive to such grammatical nuances back then already.


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## ahvalj

As to Lithuanian, I recall when the "Voice of America" still broadcasted in that language, they respectfully did not decline the names of the American leaders, so one could hear something like _su George Bush, pasak Dick Chaney_ and so on.


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## jazyk

Artificial or not, the Czech mind needs to decline everything, unless it is impossible, which affects a minute number of words.


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## ahvalj

Some languages use filler consonants like _muzeja_.


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## jazyk

In Polish: śpiewa z Luciano Pavarotti
In Czech: zpívá s Lucianem Pavarottim


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## ahvalj

Yes, that's the result of intentional efforts. But when we're dealing with natural phonetic evolution, Czech has by far the largest amount of homonymic case forms among all Slavic languages that retain the declension: especially due to the _stavení_-type where contraction and vowel fronting have created _í_ from a number of originally distinct forms (_-ьje, -ьja, -ьju, -ьji, -ьjь_).


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## jazyk

ahvalj said:


> Yes, that's the result of intentional efforts


Please explain.


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## Awwal12

jazyk said:


> There 's no Slavic fashion. Czech has only a handful of indeclinable nouns, whereas Polish and Russian have quite a few. In Czech video, for example, is declined, in Polish it is not, even though it could be.


Theoretically everything could be declined. For example, some Lithuanian academicians declared that "eiro" ("the euro") is now sufficiently common to turn into the perfectly declinable "eira". However, Slavic languages usually don't do that, which is the point.


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## jazyk

Awwal12 said:


> However, Slavic languages usually don't do that, which is the point.


Czech does: jedno euro, dvě eura, pět eur. You will find people, though, who don't decline euro, but Ústav pro jazyk český recommends declining it, and I think most people do it anyway, most having never heard of the Ústav's recommendation.


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## ahvalj

jazyk said:


> Please explain.


A loan passes though a period of adaption, when somebody decides whether to accept it and how to treat it. An inherited declension type is just inherited, it can't be arbitrarily changed.


Awwal12 said:


> Theoretically everything could be declined. For example, some Lithuanian academicians declared that "eiro" ("the euro") is now sufficiently common to turn into the perfectly declinable "eira". However, Slavic languages usually don't do that, which is the point.


It's about Latvian. That's the only Roman-writing language I know that insists on transliterating every possible loan, including names. As to _eira,_ there was a similar case with _Peugeot>Peža_ which would sound the same as _peža_ “cunt”.


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## jazyk

ahvalj said:


> A loan passes though a period of adaption, when somebody decides whether to accept it and how to treat it. An inherited declension type is just inherited, it can't be arbitrarily changed.


Right, nothing new here, but I don't see how it correlates with the rest of your post. Or maybe your yes doesn't refer to the Luciano Pavarotti examples?


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## ahvalj

jazyk said:


> Right, nothing new here, but I don't see how it correlates with the rest of your post. Or maybe your yes doesn't refer to the Luciano Pavarotti examples?





jazyk said:


> Artificial or not, the Czech mind needs to decline everything, unless it is impossible, which affects a minute number of words.


Czech mind needs to decline everything and it does it when it has the choice (as with adapted loanwords), but it can do nothing with the outcomes of Czech phonetic evolution, which has created countless (first of all since _í_-nouns can be formed from most verbs) cases of homonymy.


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## jazyk

Now I get. Agreed!

I don't think they are countless, though. A few dozen? I searched online slova končící na í and unfortunately I didn't find anything. Off the top of my head, I could mention území, zázemí, podzemí, polesí, nádraží, náměstí, návrší, náboženství, občanství, pekařství, and řeznictví.


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## AndrasBP

Awwal12 said:


> some Lithuanian academicians declared that "eiro" ("the euro") is now sufficiently common to turn into the perfectly declinable "eira".





ahvalj said:


> It's about Latvian.


The Lithuanian form of "euro" is *euras*, and it is declinable. _(I didn't expect the usual Latvian/Lithuanian mix-up in this forum! ) _


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## Awwal12

jazyk said:


> Czech does: jedno euro, dvě eura, pět eur.


Czech has a declension paradigm for nouns ending in -o. Lithuanian Latvian doesn't, but there's an option to simply adjust the word (2b). It's as if Czech turned the Japanese name Susumu (進) into "Susumo" and started declining it like "euro".


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## Zec

"Here" the situation depends on the declension. Most foreign nouns end up being declined whatever sound they end in. Some solutions not found or at least not common in native words include:

1. masculines with Nom. sg. suffix -_o_, limited to personal names in the native lexicon (and in that particular declension, only in original nicknames ending in -_ko_ e.g. _Vinko_, Gen. sg. _Vinka_), but also found in common nouns in foreign words. So, in addition to _Luciano_, Gen. sg. _Luciana_, one can also find _tempo_, Gen. sg. _tempa_.

2. masculines whose stem ends in vowels, followed by Nom. sg. zero ending, e.g. _kanu_, Gen. sg. _kanua_.

One thing we just _don't_ want to decline are female names not ending in -_a_. Apparently the i-declension (e.g. _kost_, Gen. sg. _kosti_ 'bone'), to which these names could theoretically be assigned to (and  were assigned to in the past), is so unproductive that it just won't, won't accept loanwords anymore. The preliminary (and the standard language's solution) is simply not to decline these names. So, _Ines_, Gen. sg. _Ines_. However, in the spoken langage, such names may eventually be extended with a (nickname forming) derivational suffix and become declinable. So, the indeclinable _Ines_ becomes a declinable _Inesica_, Gen. sg. _Inesice_.

Similarly for adjectives. We just don't, don't want to decline newly imported adjectives unless some kind of suffix is added to them. Apparently root adjectives, although very frequent, are, like i-declension, not productive anymore... For learned graeco-latin loanwords a standard way to do that has already been decided upon (add the suffix -_an_), so we get adjectives like _fenomenalan_, _racionalan_, _optimističan_, but for English loanwords like _kul_ and _fensi_ we just don't know what to do and leave them undeclinable. Apparently, this undeclinability of "naked" foreign adjectives was already present in the time when the language received the bulk of Turkish loanwords. At least some non-learned adjectives eventually end up adding a suffix and becoming declinable. Such is the case of the German loanword _braun-ast_ in my dialect.

So, the rule is, basically: 1. decline everything that can be declined according to a productive declension pattern, however foreign it's shape may be. 2. if not, leave it undeclinable, at least until a suitable suffix is found to make it declinable.


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## Awwal12

AndrasBP said:


> The Lithuanian form of "euro" is *euras*, and it is declinable. _(I didn't expect the usual Latvian/Lithuanian mix-up in this forum! ) _


Ah, my bad. That topic once appeared in a dialogue between a Latvian and a Lithuanian citizen, which is a source of this misunderstanding on my part.


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## jazyk

At Awwal 12: You wrote Slavic languages behave in a certain way, and I told you to count Czech out. Now you mentioned Lithuanian.


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## Awwal12

jazyk said:


> You wrote Slavic languages behave in a certain way, and I told you to count Czech out. Now you mentioned Lithuanian.


Slavic languages normally do NOT decline foreign words which don't fit into any of their declension paradigms. Czech doesn't decline "Susumu" or "Nagasaki". It also doesn't decline some words which it could've, but it's not the main point.


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## jazyk

A man named Nagasaki:
Nagasaki
Bez Nagasakiho
K Nagasakimu
Vidím Nagasakiho
Nagasaki!
O Nagasakim
S Nagasakim

A woman named Nagasaki: indeclinable. 

The city: indeclinable.

And I can imagine susumu, bez susumua, se susumuem, etc.


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## Awwal12

Now that's something new to me.    But indeed, Wikipedia apparently declines such names... and for some reason the city is left undeclined (the Russian de-facto mostly indeclinable toponyms ending in -vo and -no come to my mind, but it's a bit different story).


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## jazyk

That's why I told you to count Czech out.


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## AndrasBP

jazyk said:


> A man named Nagasaki:
> Nagasaki
> Bez Nagasakiho
> K Nagasakimu
> Vidím Nagasakiho


Because it's declined as a masculine adjective. 
I remember hearing "Viděl jsi Harry*ho* Pottera?"


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## jazyk

Exactly!


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## Ben Jamin

jazyk said:


> In Polish: śpiewa z Luciano Pavarotti
> In Czech: zpívá s Lucianem Pavarottim


I say 'śpiewa z Luc*j*an*em* Pavarotti*m*'. Italian names ending with '-i" are declined as adjectives.
Polish has a set of rules for declension of foreign rules. I even owned once a book with those rules. Nowadays few people in Poland care about any rules. I get also really upset when I see Slavic names transcribed from Cyrillic in Poland using English transcription. When I see "Sergey Zhdanov" I get sick.


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## jazyk

You must be alone then. 😀


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## Awwal12

Well, adjectival declension for the names ending in -i is pretty much ruled out for Russian and Polish: it's hard to mix up -i and -y/-yj/-ij (< *-ъjь/*-ьjь). That may be the factor making non-declension much more favourable in these languages in general. In Czech the existing cases of non-declension look pretty random to me.


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## jazyk

Awwal12 said:


> In Czech the existing cases of non-declension look pretty random to me.


I can only think of one Czech indeclinable noun: zoo. Maybe Encolpius, who started this discussion, can think of more?

Edit: one more - tabu. 

I found a few more here: finále, ralley, derby, lady, penále, and, taxi. But taxík, which I hear and say much more often, is declined.


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## Olaszinhok

I am even more convinced that Czech is pretty "complex", morphologically speaking, much more than Russian (at least).


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## ahvalj

Czech has three sources of morphological complexity in its nominal declension:

the existence of inherited stem types (_zima, pes, kost, dům, svekrev, dítě_) that began to decline differently, mostly as a result of changes between Proto-Indo-European and late Common Slavic
their variants that emerged in the 1st millennium after palatal consonants (_vůle, kůň_) and later additionally diverged in Old Czech, including the outcomes of disappearance of intervocalic _j _(_vőļejǫ>vůlí,_ _ő_ means _o_ under the neo-acute intonation)
the mixture of endings from different types in one paradigm (like in the recently discussed _hrdina_).
In Russian the (1) survives, but the types of _svekrev_ and _dítě_ have mostly merged to productive types; the (2) is reversed so that with the exception of _o/e_ in unstressed endings and _-ii_ (versus _-e_) in the dative and locative singular of several kinds of words the hard stem paradigm has been restored, and _j_ survives in Russian in all cases (except between a vowel and _i,_ and in part of the paradigm of the long adjectives, where its disappearance was analogical after pronouns); the (3) was mostly operative in the plural, whereas in the singular the three stem types are retained quite well, without exchange of endings.

Czech also partly retains the distinction in the plural between the nominative and accusative, though sometimes only orthographically (_psi : psy_).

Plus, speaking of the stems, we find the second palatalization of velars that survives in Czech but was leveled out in some Russian dialects and never developed in the others; the weak yers (_pes/пёс : psa/пса_) were dropped in both languages more or less identically.


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## jazyk

Svekrev is not a Czech word. It reminds me of mother-in-law in some Slavic languages.

Do you mean vůl, ox, or vůle, will?


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## ahvalj

_Vůle._ _Svekrev_ is mentioned as archaic in Czech in the literature (and cited e. g. in Wiktionary).


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## jazyk

Not even this dictionary with lots of old words lists it. I recommend not using it around Czechs.


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## ahvalj

And you say Czech is conservative ,(


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## Awwal12

Olaszinhok said:


> I am even more convinced that Czech is pretty "complex", morphologically speaking, much more than Russian (at least).


Don't forget that in Russian stress is phonemic and morphologically relevant. Which is one of the main factors contributing to the astronomical (100+, by some estimates?) amount of formally different noun declension paradigms.


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## jazyk

I don't remember saying Czech is conservative.

I found swekrew in this 1838 dictionary.


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## ahvalj

_You_ was a generalizing pronoun in this case ,)

_Mrkev_ seems to be alive.



jazyk said:


> I don't think they are countless, though. A few dozen? I searched online slova končící na í and unfortunately I didn't find anything. Off the top of my head, I could mention území, zázemí, podzemí, polesí, nádraží, náměstí, návrší, náboženství, občanství, pekařství, and řeznictví.


Many examples can be found in Wiktionary.
Very many verbs form nouns in _-ní/-tí:_ _čtení, psaní, umění, myšlení, stárnutí_ — that's an unlimitedly productive type as far as I imagine. Also random examples: _mládí, stáří, štěstí, počasí, listí, kamení, obilí, -ství…_


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## ahvalj

The rules in Lithuanian are more or less the same as in Russian (somewhat more liberal: _kinas_ and _euras_ decline, as do many nouns in _-ė,_ like _želė_) and I strongly suspect this was simply modeled after the Russian pattern: _asorti, taksi, Kiuri, ledi, spageti, Gandi, bistro, Didro, maestro, tabu, Baku, Neru; _also _ateljė_ does not decline, probably because Lithuanian has no native words in _-jė_; female names in consonants: _Klinton, Merkel, Anegret Kramp-Karenbauer _good lord.

There is a psychological barrier governing to what extent a loaned word should be changed to fit the existing declension patterns (compare Biblical names in Greek and Latin). In Russian in the 19th century all foreign surnames tended to remain unchanged, even those perfectly declinable in the later language — simply because the educated speakers were fluent in foreign languages and considered that if the donor language doesn't have declension, then it should be avoided in these words when borrowed into Russian. There was never anything like the West and western Slouth Slavic approach with _Harryho Pavarottiho:_ people wouldn't even believe something like this is possible.


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## jazyk

ahvalj said:


> _Mrkev_ seems to be alive.


Very much so. In Moravia mrkva is heard too. And mrkva is also standard Slovak.


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## Ben Jamin

jazyk said:


> You must be alone then. 😀


Why?


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## jazyk

Because nobody else does that: "z Lucjanem Pavarottim" site:pl - Google Search
"z Luciano Pavarotti" site:pl - Google Search


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## ahvalj

They simply spell it differently: Lucianem Pavarottim.


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## jazyk

Right. Z Luciano Pavarotti a z Lucianem Pavarottim can be found, but not z Lucjanem Pavarottim. Another one you can find is z Luciano Pavarottim.


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## ahvalj

Before the middle 18th century _Luciano Pavarotti_ would have become in Russia some _Лукьян Паваротий _(with a nominal declension: _Паваротия, Паваротию_): people were ingenuous then and simply russified foreign names. Purely linguistically speaking, that's a welcome approach, since no grammar rules get harmed, unlike what other Slavic languages do. Ancient Greeks and Romans, and overall most peoples in history, did this as well, unless they dealt with a prestigious language they hesitated to distort.


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## jazyk

ahvalj said:


> Many examples can be found in Wiktionary.
> Very many verbs form nouns in _-ní/-tí:_ _čtení, psaní, umění, myšlení, stárnutí_ — that's an unlimitedly productive type as far as I imagine. Also random examples: _mládí, stáří, štěstí, počasí, listí, kamení, obilí, -ství…_


These words, unlike derby and zoo, are not indeclinable, as their instrumental differs from the remaining cases: NGDAVL umění (art), instrumental: uměním.


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## ahvalj

I spoke of Czech, which on the one hand wishes to decline every foreign noun (as you wrote), but on the other accepts an unusually high percent oh homonymy in its own inherited declension.


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## Encolpius

Olaszinhok said:


> As for Italian, we don't even make a foreign noun plural:_ il bar - i bar  _the bar _-_ (the) bars, we just change the definite masculine article (bar is masculine in Italian).



Actually that is what I have been thinking of, not only declension, bt I do not know what you call that, suffixes, grammatical changes. 
Are there imilar words in other Romance languages. I bet there are. 
But not in English or German, right? I mean* no changes in plural. *


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## muhahaa

Finnish "pikku" (little) has no declension.


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## jazyk

Viime (last) and ensi (next) as well.


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## Encolpius

Wow, very fascinating, thanks!!  
Is pikku a noun or adjective?


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## jazyk

It's an adjective, and it is especially common in compounds.


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## ahvalj

But the Finnic situation is exactly the opposite of the Slavic one. In Slavic indeclinable are loanwords, whereas in Finnic the adjectives were originally indeclinable in the attributive function (as elsewhere in Uralic), then began to agree with nouns in case and number, but a small amount of (inherited and ancient) adjectives has not been affected by this process.


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## Encolpius

jazyk said:


> I can only think of one Czech indeclinable noun: zoo. Maybe Encolpius, who started this discussion, can think of more?



Just open Slovník cizích slov or think of many foreign female names  (Lucy, Marilyn, Kiki, etc) [while i Hungarian: Lucyvel, Marilynnel, Kikivel, etc] Jeden guru mi prozradil jedno tabu, že až poletíme do Peru ať si nedáme tofu s kešu místo tiramisu, jinak na nás budou dělat bububu.


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## Olaszinhok

Encolpius said:


> [while i Hungarian: Lucyvel, Marilynnel, Kikivel, etc]


In my opinion, those are just postpositions attached to the nouns Lucyvel  - Kikivel - with Lucy, with Kiki.


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## Encolpius

Call it what you wish I am interested in the fact the word has been changed while it is not in Czech.


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## Awwal12

Olaszinhok said:


> In my opinion, those are just postpositions attached to the nouns Lucyvel  - Kikivel - with Lucy, with Kiki.


In agglutinative languages the border between postfixes and postpositions is naturally vague. However, as long as they cannot be separated by something which is undoubtedly a distinct word, or don't demostrate phonetic independency, it's safe to classify these morphemes as postfixes.


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## Encolpius

Thanks, Awwal, yes I am searching for "missing" postfixes in different languages.


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## Ben Jamin

jazyk said:


> Because nobody else does that: "z Lucjanem Pavarottim" site:pl - Google Search
> "z Luciano Pavarotti" site:pl - Google Search


Google will not tell you anything about pronunciation. It is als a risky statement "nobody does this, because it is not on Google".


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## jazyk

I know a bunch of Poles and I know how they talk.

Imię _Romano_ i podobnie zakończone występują w czterech moich poradach, jednak w żadnej z nich nie zalecam unikania odmiany. Napisałem wyraźnie, że imiona te należy odmieniać, zaś nieodmienność można zaakceptować, skoro znajduje uzasadnienie funkcjonalne. 
imiona włoskie na -o - Poradnia językowa PWN

Główna przeszkoda pojawia się na poziomie praktycznym: formy odmieniane nie pozwalają na jednoznaczne odtworzenie formy podstawowej imienia, np. gdy słyszymy o _Conradzie Moreno_, nie jesteśmy stanie ustalić, czy jego imię w mianowniku ma formę _Conrad_ czy _Conrado_. 
imiona zakończone na -o - Poradnia językowa PWN


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## Encolpius

muhahaa said:


> Finnish "pikku" (little) has no declension.



Since I do not speak Finnish I'd like to ask you or Jazyk to show us how it works, how come pikku is an exception. Thank you in advance.


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## jazyk

Elokuva-arvio: Pikku tärkeilijät kriisi-iässä
Movie review: Little pretenders in an age of crisis - midlife crisis (?) (I don't like my translation, but tough.)
Elokuva-arvio: Pikku tärkeilijät kriisi-iässä

As you can see, nothing was added to pikku. Why? I don't know. Languages are fraught with exceptions.

The usual word for little/small is pieni, which has to be declined. I usually see pikku in compounds, as I've written before.


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## Ben Jamin

jazyk said:


> Viime (last) and ensi (next) as well.


Are they genuine adjectives? Or just particles, like "mini" or "maxi" which, I belive, are used in many synthetic  languages without declension.


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## jazyk

They are adjectives: Palasin viime viikolla (I returned last week). Palaan ensi viikolla (I will return next week).


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## ahvalj

_Ensi__, eri, kelpo, koko, tosi, viime._

_Eri_ also doesn't decline in Estonian.


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