# Genitive singular



## Lorenc

Hello. In Polish, the language I am studying, the genitive-singular ending for masculine-inanimate nouns is either -a or -u, and there is no clear, unequivocal rule to choose between the two endings. 
In other words, for each masculine-inanimate word one has to memorize if it takes -a or -u in the genitive-singular.
Statistically, roughly 60% of this class of nouns take -u and 40% -a.

I don't know Czech (nor Slovak), but I was wondering if the situation is the same in this case.

Thank you for your attention!

Lorenzo


----------



## jazyk

It's similar in Czech, expect that in Polish _a_ is much more used than in Czech with inanimate nouns. I don't know, if I were to say it by guesstimate, I'd say that 85% of Czech inanimate nouns take u and 15% take a. Take a look here too.


----------



## bibax

> In other words, for each masculine-inanimate word one has to memorize if it takes -a or -u in the genitive-singular.


Same in Latin: you must memorize if a noun ending with -us is o-stem or u-stem. For example _dominus_ (o-stem) is declined differently than _spiritus_ (u-stem): _cum domino_, but _cum spiritu_ (not _cum spirito_).

The reason is the same in both Latin and Czech.

les (gen. lesa) was originally o-stem;
dům (gen. domu) was originally u-stem;

In Czech both declensions merged but some remnants remain.


----------



## Lorenc

jazyk: Thanks  In the thread you mentions there's a post which says


> From the online comprehensive grammar of Czech language, p. 23:
> "About 97% of inanimate masculine hard stem nouns have -u, 2% have -a, and 1% permit both endings."


I also had a quick look at "A Grammar of Czech as a Foreign Language (pdf, 2010), by Karel Tahal (http://www.factumcz.cz/K.Tahal-Grammar.pdf)". There too they say that hard-stemmed masc. inanim. nouns take -u, and list a handful of nouns which have -a as exceptions. 
Unfortunately for me, as I said in Polish the overall proportion is reported to be about 60% -u and 40% -a; See eg E. Dąbrwowska, J Child Lang 32, 191-205 (2005), http://www.school-of-english.dept.shef.ac.uk/staff/dabrowska/dabrowska_7.html. She quotes (note2, p193) 64% -u for native Polish words and 58% -u for borrowed words.

bibax: Thank you for your mention of 2nd/4th conjugation classes in Latin. Is this to be intended as an analogy or in actual fact for some (most? all?) Polish words which take -u one can find a Latin cognate belonging to the 4th class?


----------



## bibax

I wanted to say that both Latin and Protoslavic inherited the o-stem and u-stem (beside others) declensions from the Proto-IE language. Latin retained the difference (the 2nd/4th declension), but Czech and Polish merged both declensions with the exception of the genitive singular. Czech is more advanced in this aspect than Polish. The ending -u won (nearly).

I know only one cognate:

Latin domus (gen. sing. domus with long u) and Slavic dom (gen. sing. domu);
domus and dom are u-stem nouns;


----------



## jazyk

> and Slavic dom (gen. sing. domu);


But then again, the Russian genitive is doma.


----------

