Singular Old English Approximate English Translation

Singular Old English Approximate English Translation Nominative stān stone Accusative stān stone Genitive stānes of the stone Dative stāne to/for the stone Plural Old English Approximate English Translation Nominative stānas stones Accusative stānas stones Genitive stāna of the stones Dative stānum to/for the stones. The stem of the Old English word is clearly visible. It's stān to which different endings are being attached. The case endings are: Singular Plural Nominative - -as Accusative - -as Genitive -es -a Dative -e -um. There are many other nouns in Old English which follow this same pattern of case endings when they inflect, in fact some 35% of all Old English nouns follow this pattern. This pattern of endings is called the masculine a-declension. There are four other common declensional patterns in Old English, but a noun will belong to only one of them. Hence we can say that stan is a masculine a-declension noun.