Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan теrmez state university department of philology and teaching languages: on theme

Noun classes[edit]
Not all nouns take the same endings to inflect for number and case. Instead, each noun belongs to one of eight different classes, and each class has a different set of endings (sometimes several, depending on subtype).
In Proto-Germanic, one could tell which class a noun was by its ending in the nominative singular. But by the Old English period, most of these endings had disappeared or merged with other endings, so this was no longer possible.
a-stems
A-stem nouns are by far the largest class, totaling 60% of all nouns.^[8] Some are masculine, some are neuter. They are called a-stems because in Proto-Germanic times, they ended in -az (if masculine) or -ą (if neuter). However, in Old English, both these endings have vanished, and masculines only differ from neuters in the nominative/accusative plural.
Masculine a-stems are almost all inflected the same, as in hund ("dog") below. The neuter a-stems, however, are split in two: some of them end in -u in the nominative/accusative plural, while others have no ending there at all. This was caused by a sound change called high vowel apocope, which occurred in the prehistory of Old English. Short -i and -u disappeared at the ends of words after a heavy syllable—that is, a syllable containing a long vowel or long diphthong or ending in two or more consonants—and after two light syllables.^[9] Nouns which kept short -i/-u are called light, while nouns which lost them are called heavy.
So, the a-stems actually come in three separate declensions: one for masculine nouns, one for "heavy" neuter nouns, and one for "light" neuter nouns. They are exemplified by hund ("dog"), sċip ("boat"), and hūs ("house")
n general, the weak declension is used after the words for "the/that" and "this" and possessive determiners such as "my," "your," and "his," while the strong declension is used the rest of the time. Hence "a live scorpion" is cwic þrōwend, while "the live scorpion" is sē cwica þrōwend. Further details:

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  The weak declension is also used in direct address, as in Ēalā fæġere mæġden ("Hey beautiful girl") or þū dysiġe hōre ("you stupid whore").
  

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  Ordinal numbers and comparative adjectives only take the weak declension, even in situations that would otherwise call for the strong declension. The most important exception is ōðer ("other/second"), which is always strong despite being both an ordinal number and a comparative. Of the four words for "first," forma and ǣrra are always weak, but ǣrest and fyrest can be either strong or weak just like most other adjectives.
  

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  The adjective āgen ("own") is usually strong in the phrase "one's own": Hēo forlēt ōðre dæġe on hire āgnum horse ("She left the next day on her own horse").