Part II, cont.

Noun Declensions

I have taken much pains to condense from the best authorities, and to simplify, the foregoing rules. They seem to admit of the fewest exceptions; and I think that it will sufficiently appear, from a consideration of them, and still more were the subject to be followed through the conflicting opinions of grammarians, that iny attempt to regulate the inflexions of nouns, by exclusive or principal attention to their final changes and attenuations, must lead to endless perplexity.

I shall present here the modes of declining the following nouns — la a day, mi a month, cró a hovel, bó a cow, bean a woman, and clann children. I omit many others that are irregular, but of less common use. The following are taken from O'Brien and O'Reilly.

An is expressive of the diminution of a substantive, thus cnoc a hill, cnocan a hillock. Some of these have inferior diminutions, as cnoicin a very small hill ; which are formed by adding the i of the primitive gen. in the penultimate syllable, and changing the last a into i.