Hylian Nouns

sonEn hilanan

Sonën Hilanan

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. An important characteristic of Hylian nouns is that the vast majority of them follow a regular pattern. Unlike English, in which nouns can have almost any ending, Hylian nouns all have the same ending. Plurality is also indictated by a regular pattern. Below are the two noun endings.

Singular Nouns			Plural Nouns
=e	-e	All regular singular nouns have an -e ending. No other part of speech has this ending. So a word that ends in -e can only be a singular noun and nothing else. Here are examples of nouns: lErde Lërde = Book brinste Brinste = Arm	=En	-ën	All regular plural nouns have an -ën ending. No other part of speech has this ending. So a word that ends in -ën can only be a plural noun and nothing else. Here are examples of plural nouns: lErdEn Lërdën = Books BrinstEn Brinstën = Arms

Gender

Many languages, such as Spanish and French, assign nouns a grammatical gender. For example, the Spanish word lapíz, which means "pencil," is masculine; while the word fotografía, which means "photograph," is feminine. If this makes no sense to you, then you're on the right track. In other languages grammatical gender is assigned to all words, even inanimate objects. However, in English, words have no grammatical gender. They only have a natural gener, i.e. "woman" is feminine, and "man" is masculine. Hylian also uses natural gender for words. It has an invariable definite article which does not change with gender. There are gender neutral words, as well as gender specific words, as in English. There is a regular way of turning a gender neutral word into a gender specific word. Here are some examples:

lErde	lërde	Book - Gender neutral
piante	piante	Parent - Gender neutral
pi&ntile	piántile	Father - Gender specific, masculine
pi&ntine	piántine	Mother - Gender specific, feminine

Forming Gender-Specific Words

Forming a gender-specific noun confroms to a regular pattern. It involves taking the word stem and adding a suffix. When a gender suffix is added to the word, please note that an accent mark is added to preserve the stress of the original word. Here is an example using dege, which means "deity" or "god": IMPORTANT NOTE: Only nouns can take a gender-specific subject, adjectives don't. When using an adjective to describe a gender-specific noun, the adjective only has to agree in number.

Neutral Word	Stem	+	Suffix	+	e	=	New Word
dege	deg	+	-il	+	e	=	dégile
dege	deg	+	-in	+	e	=	dégine

Original Word	Definition	New Word	Definition
dege	"Deity", gender-neutral	dégile	"God", masculine
dege	"Deity", gender-neutral	dégine	"Goddess", feminine

Sections

Hylian to English