The first declension is a category of mostly feminine nouns in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 and Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 with the defining feature of a long ā (either analysed as a part of the stem or case-ending). In Greek grammar, it is also called the alpha

Alpha (letter)

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 1. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph...

 declension, since its forms have the letter α, at least in the plural.

In Latin and Greek grammar, the first declension is analyzed as a thematic declension. But its lack of a Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...

 thematic vowel (o or e) and of any nominative singular ending (ordinarily -s or -os) don't neatly place it within either of the Proto-Indo-European nominal

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

 categories, thematic and athematic. Therefore, it's assumed to be a newer formation: a suffix based on the neuter plural ending *-(e)h₂ forming a collective noun.

Latin nouns and adjectives

Latin first declension has only one set of endings for both feminine and masculine nouns.

The very small native masculine group includes only a few occupation nouns and nouns imported from the Greek masculine first declension.

• agricola "farmer" ← ager, agro- "field" and root of colō "I cultivate"

• poēta "poet" ← ποιητής poiētēs "one who composes" poetry
• pīrāta "pirate" ← πειρᾱτής peirātēs "one who makes an attempt on" someone

The same endings are used for the feminine gender of Latin adjectives.

Greek nouns

Greek first declension has two basic classes of feminine endings and one basic class of masculine endings, distinguished by their original nominative singular: long -ā, short -(y)ă, long -ās. But besides the nominative and accusative singular of feminines, and nominative, genitive, and vocative singular of masculines, forms are the same between subclasses.

In the Attic dialect

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...

, an ā-ē split divides each class into two subclasses: nouns with ᾱ and nouns with η. By contrast, other dialects tend to generalize the vowel one way or the other — Ionic

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek .-History:Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C.By the end of the Greek Dark Ages in the 5th Century...

 has only ē, and Doric

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...

 and Aeolic

Aeolic Greek

Aeolic Greek is a linguistic term used to describe a set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia , Thessaly, and in the Aegean island of Lesbos and the Greek colonies of Asia Minor ....

 have only ā.

Greek adjectives

The feminine of first- and second-declension adjectives uses the -ā class of the first declension:

• -os, -ā/ē, -on

First- and third-declension adjectives, including participles in -nt-, use the -(y)ă class. Here are examples of this class, which is complex because of sound changes involving the y (see Ancient Greek nouns: short a):

• -us, -eia, -u
• -ās, -aina, -an

• -ōn, -ousa, -on
• -ās, -āsa, -an
• -eis, -eisa, -en

See also

For specific information on the first declension as it appears in Latin and Greek, see the appropriate sections in Latin declension and Ancient Greek nouns.