4.5 Singular Noun Endings

A noun’s ending, or lack of one, indicates NUMBER and (usually) GENDER

  • Masculine singular (MS)
    • MS are usually “endingless”
      • This means, most often, there is no special identifying ending to let you know it is a masculine singular word
      • Usually the absence of a Feminine, Dual, or Plural ending is enough to let you know you are looking at an MS word
    • Occasionally an MS noun may end in (accented) ה ֶ֫ - for example שָֹדֶה means “field”
  • Feminine Singular (FS):
    • תּוֹרָה (the (accented) ה ָ ending is most typical)
    • Nouns that end in (\(E, A, \bar A, or \ \hat U\))60 + ת (excluding the Feminine plural ending וֹת) are usually FS
      • בַּת (daughter)
      • תִּפְאֶ֫רֶת (glory)
      • בְּרִית (covenant)
      • מַלְכּוּת (kingdom)
    • Some feminine words are also endingless: אֶ֫רֶץ (land)
      • Other common words are FS endingless:
        • עִיר (city),
        • אֶ֫בֶן (stone)
        • Many vocabulary lists will mark an endingless feminine word as “(F)”

Some students fall into a habit of thinking every word-final ה is feminine.

  • ה ֶ֫ is masculine
  • UNACCENTED ה ָ is NOT the FS ending

  1. Remember this is shorthand for Tsere, Patach, Qamets and Shurek respectively. When we say something like "Qamets+Hei, we mean a Qamets under the preceding consonant followed by ה↩︎