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Nouns (Nume).
Masculine Terminations.
The determination of the gender of the noun is one of the difficulties of the Roumanian language. The student, however, must first observe that masculine nouns generally end in a consonant:
| Romăn, | ‘Roumanian.’ |
| Engles, | ‘Englishman.’ |
| Grec, | ‘Greek.’ |
| nepot, | ‘nephew.’ |
| professor, | ‘teacher.’ |
| împărat, | ‘emperor.’ |
| tun, | ‘cannon.’ |
There are, however, a few masculine nouns which end with a vowel, and here the real difficulty begins. They will generally be found to end in—
| e short: rege, ‘king;’ peṣte, ‘fish;’ frate, ‘brother.’ |
| u or ŭ: socru, ‘father-in-law;’ Dumnezeŭ, ‘God.’ |
| ĭ short: usturoĭ, ‘onion;’ ciocoĭ, ‘parvenu.’ |
| ă short: tată, ‘father;’ popă, ‘priest.’ |
The Plural of Masculine Nouns.
The plurals of all masculine nouns without exception end in ĭ short. This ĭ is added to the singular when the singular ends in a consonant. When it ends in a vowel, that vowel is
