# Slovak: pre slovenciny or slovencinu?



## Setwale_Charm

Which is correct and is there a rule explaining when feminine nouns take the -y ending in Genitive and when they take the -u ending?

Why is it "hrdinu" but "ženy"?


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## werrr

“Hrdina” is masculine. Is it the answer to your qeustion?


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## Setwale_Charm

So do all feminine nouns with the stem ending in a hard consonant have -y in Genitive?


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## werrr

All feminine nouns ending in “-a” with the stem not ending in soft consonant have the “-y” in singular genitive.

(Possibly, there are some rare exceptions concerning loanwords.)


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## Setwale_Charm

Thanks for your help, werrr. So I take it the correct form is: *pre slovenciny*?


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## werrr

No, unless you mean it in plural.

The preposition “pre” takes accusative, i.e. it is “pre slovenčinu”.


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## Setwale_Charm

Thank you, that`s becoming more or less clear now.


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## Suane

You should see our resource tip for declension> http://www.angelfire.com/sk3/quality/Slovak_declension.html

If you know "vzory" -paradigms, then you should be able to know the endings. 

Slovenčina= feminine gender= 4 possible paradigms-žena, ulica, dlaň, kosť
-ends in 'a' in Nominativ singular (basic form)= 2 possible 
paradigms- žena, ulica 
-ends in 'y' in Nominativ plural ('slovenčiny' (because 'n' is 
a hard consonant)= 1 possible paradigm-žena (because 
nominativ plural žena also ends in 'y'-ženy as opposed to
nominative plural for 'ulica'-'ulice') 
Then, you need to ask yourself a question to determine the case you want to use- 'pre koho, pre čo?' - 'for whom, for what?'= accusative

Then you look in the table of declension for 'žena' and that lists '(pre)ženu' for accusative singular. And that is why you use 'pre slovenčinu'.


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