samostalniki

Samostalniki, or nouns, are a fundamental part of Slovenian grammar. They name people, animals, objects, places and abstract ideas, and can function as the subject or the object of a sentence. In Slovenian, samostalniki have grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and inflect for number and case.

Nouns decline for six grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative and instrumental. The nominative typically marks the subject; genitive expresses possession; dative indicates the indirect object; accusative marks the direct object; locative is used with certain prepositions to indicate location; instrumental expresses means or instrument. Nouns also inflect for number, with singular, dual and plural forms, though the dual is mainly used for two, three or four items or with numerals 2–4, depending on the noun’s declension pattern.

Nouns belong to different declension classes based on gender and stem, which determine the endings in each case and number. Common nouns differ from proper nouns, the latter referring to specific names and capitalized in writing. Animacy can influence certain case endings in the masculine singular.

Adjectives and determiners agree with the noun in gender, number and case, making noun form central to sentence structure and meaning. Examples of common nouns include hiša (house), feminine; stol (chair), masculine; knjiga (book), feminine; mesto (city), neuter. A proper noun example is Ljubljana, capital city name. Understanding samostalniki is essential for accurate Slovenian usage, including agreement, syntax and expressing relationships between entities.