Nouns are usually listed and sorted by their nominative singular form, but declension is defined by the genitive singular form. For this reason, the genitive singular form is commonly written with the nominative in dictionaries.
When translating from Slovene it may be difficult to look words up in a dictionary as one is likely to encounter an inflected form of the word which probably will not be in the dictionary. With practice the suffixes will become familiar and allow one to determine the part of speech for the word and the root of the word from which, if it is a noun, the nominative form may be determined and then found in a dictionary.
| nominative ending | example | exception | |
|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | ‑consonant | stol (chair) | Luka (man's name) |
| feminine | ‑a | miza (table) | lastnost (property) |
| neuter | ‑o or ‑e | mesto (city) | vrata (door) |
In Slovene a noun can be in one of six cases:
Searching Wiktionary for the word stol gives the gender of the noun and, for masculine nouns, its animacy and whether or not it ends in a hard or soft consonant. It also indicates which class of stem the noun belongs to. This can be confusing because a noun can belong to, for example, the o-stem class even though it does not have an "o" in it. This is because the word may be derived from a word which did have an "o" at the end of the stem. Knowing the stem class is useful as it indicates which declension class the noun belongs to.
The o-stem declension class is also called the "first masculine declension". This declension class is the most common for masculine nouns. Nouns ending in hard and soft consonants that belong to this class decline differently. Thus we have the o-stem (or first masculine) hard and soft declensions.
The Wiktionary result also indicates that the genitive of stol is stola. This information, specifically that the genitive ends in a, is another way of indicating that the noun belongs to the first masculine declension.
Most masculine nouns end in a consonant and most belong to either the hard or soft first masculine declension class.
Soft: c, č, š, ž and j
Hard: all other consonants
| hard | soft | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | dual | plural | singular | dual | plural | |
| nominative | ‑ | ‑a | ‑i | ‑ | ‑a | ‑i |
| genitive | ‑a | ‑ov | ‑ov | ‑a | ‑ev | ‑ev |
| dative | ‑u | ‑oma | ‑om | ‑u | ‑ema | ‑em |
| accusative | nom or gen | ‑a | ‑e | nom or gen | ‑a | ‑e |
| locative | ‑u | ‑ih | ‑ih | ‑u | ‑ih | ‑ih |
| instrumental | ‑om | ‑oma | ‑i | ‑em | ‑ema | ‑i |
| 1st m (nom s ends in consonant and a few in a vowel) | Most common. Genitive s ending -a or -u. Eg. vlak, napor, pes, grad, dan, človek |
| 2nd m (nom s ends in a) | Genitive s ending -e. Eg. vodja, vojvoda, Luka |
| 3rd m (mainly for acronymns ending in any letter but -a) | For indeclinable or zero-affix m nouns. No endings in any case. Eg kant (rare) |
| 4th m (adjectival) | For nominalized adjectives. Genivive s ending -ega. Eg. moški, dežurni |
| 1st f (nom s ends in -a or -ev) | Most common f class. Genitive s ending -e. Eg. knjiga (book) |
| 2nd f (nom s ends in consonant) | Genitive s ending -i. Eg. luč |
| 3rd f (nom s ends in -i (diminutive nouns) and names ending in consonant (usually foreign)) | A small class for indeclinable or zero-affix f nouns. Eg. proper names that are indeclinable. |
| 4th f | For nominalized adjectives. Genitive plural ending -e |
| 1st n (nom s ends in -o or -e) | Genitive s ends in -a. Eg. mesto |
| 2nd n (for jaz, ti and se) | Only for jaz, ti and se. |
| 3rd n (for cardinal numbers) | Similar to 3rd m and 3rd f. For indeclinable n nouns. |
| 4th n | For nominalized adjectives. Genitive s ending -ega. Eg. duhovo |