Grammatical Gender and Noun Cases: view article

There are three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), two numbers (singular and plural), and six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, prepositional).

Gender

Grammatical gender is mostly determined by spelling/pronunciation, with feminine nouns ending in "a," "j," or specific soft consonants, masculine nouns ending in (non-feminine) consonants, and neutral nouns ending in "o," "e," "u," and rarely "i," or "y." Exceptions are most common in words referring to people, as well as words ending in the "soft" consonants. It is possible for animate masculine nouns to end in "a," as is the case in a few of the pidgin's primary parent languages.

"Soft" and "Hard" consonants

These are unofficial categories of consonants, and are not tightly held. "Soft" consonants ("th," "zh," "ng," "j," and "c," sometimes "x") are typically rewritten to their "hard" counterparts when nouns are declined. Nouns terminating in a "soft" consonant are most often feminine, but may rarely be masculine.

Exceptions
Feminine or masculine nouns that have grammatical gender not typically associated with their spelling are declined in a manner consistent with their spelling (the noun "muuher," meaning "woman," is feminine but is declined as masculine), but adjectives, determiners, and pronouns associated with the noun match its gender and case. Neuter nouns very rarely terminate in a consonant or "a," and are typically non-declinable in such cases. Adjectives, determiners, and pronouns would still decline normally.

Examples:

Masculine nouns ending in a consonant:

Masculine (consonant ending) Example 1
Nominative	bohtl	bohtlii
Accusative	bohtla	bohtloy
Genitive	bohtlu	bohtloy
Dative	bohtlom	bohtlam
Instrumental	bohtlom	bohtlamii
Prepositional	bohtle	bohtlah

Borrowed Words:
Words borrowed or derived from other languages may or may not be the same grammatical gender as the parent language, depending on spelling choices/animacy. A common instance of gender changing between the parent language and this language is with words borrowed or derived from Spanish. Words that end in "a" are typically classified as feminine in both languages, but masculine Spanish words (ending in "o" or "e") are often reclassified as neutral. Nouns referring to things/persons that apply to one particular social gender or biological sex will often retain grammatical gender, even if the spelling/pronunciation is irregular. Rarely, (most often in animate nouns that would be classified as neutral), the spelling/pronunciation is changed to retain the original grammatical gender. ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article

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