Nouns & Grammatical Gender

Overview

Kewan recognizes three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Grammatical gender follows the referent rather than being arbitrarily assigned to nouns. Neuter is the default for objects, places, concepts, and anything without an explicitly masculine or feminine referent.

Kewan uses a regular system of gender and number endings. These endings apply to both nouns and adjectives.

1. Grammatical Gender

Masculine

Masculine forms are used for specifically male people, animals, or other masculine referents.

Feminine

Feminine forms are used for specifically female people, animals, or other feminine referents.

Neuter

Neuter forms are used for objects, places, concepts, unspecified referents, and nouns without an inherent masculine or feminine identity.

Neuter is Kewan's default grammatical gender.

2. Noun Endings and Pluralization

Kewan has six regular gender-number endings.

Gender	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-o	-i
Feminine	-a	-e
Neuter	-u	-eu

These endings are mandatory for nouns.

Masculine Pluralization

Masculine nouns change their singular ending -o to -i.

Feminine Pluralization

Feminine nouns change their singular ending -a to -e.

Neuter Pluralization

Neuter nouns change their singular ending -u to -eu.

The neuter plural ending -eu contains one of Kewan's four established diphthongs.

Kewan's masculine and feminine plural patterns resemble Italian, while its neuter plural ending is a distinctive feature of Kewan.

3. Adjective Endings and Agreement

Adjectives follow the same gender and number patterns as nouns.

Gender	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-o	-i
Feminine	-a	-e
Neuter	-u	-eu

Example: Beautiful

Gender	Singular	Plural
Masculine	belo	beli
Feminine	bela	bele
Neuter	belu	beleu

An adjective must agree with the noun it describes in both gender and number.

4. Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners agree with their associated nouns in gender and number.

Kewan therefore distinguishes masculine, feminine, and neuter forms in both singular and plural contexts.

The specific forms of definite articles, indefinite articles, and other determiners will be established in the Articles & Determiners grammar page.

5. Grammatical Cases

Kewan does not use a grammatical case system for nouns.

Instead, grammatical relationships are expressed through:

Word order, which establishes relationships between subjects, verbs, and objects.
Prepositions, which express relationships such as possession, location, direction, and indirect objects.

Nouns do not change their endings to indicate nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive case.

Pronoun forms will be addressed separately in the Pronouns grammar page.

6. Relationship to Kewan's Source Languages

Kewan's noun system reflects its Romance-language influences, particularly Italian pluralization.

However, Kewan maintains its own consistent three-gender system, including a distinctive neuter singular -u and plural -eu.

Words borrowed or derived from Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, or English must be adapted to Kewan's established noun and adjective endings.

Summary

Kewan nouns and adjectives follow five fundamental grammatical principles:

Gender follows the referent, with neuter as the default.
Masculine forms use -o in the singular and -i in the plural.
Feminine forms use -a in the singular and -e in the plural.
Neuter forms use -u in the singular and -eu in the plural.
Articles and adjectives agree with nouns in gender and number, while grammatical relationships are expressed without noun cases.