Nominative Case
The subject of a sentence takes nominative case. In this case, the article takes the vowel -u. If the subject of the sentence includes multiple nouns, only the last takes the nominative ending for the article.
If there is no article, a tonal change signifies nominative case, although this is not represented in the orthography. Some feminine nouns take the suffix -i in nominative case without an article.
| Somali | English |
|---|---|
| nin | man |
| nin-ka | the man |
| nin-ku... | the man... (followed by a verb) |
| nin-ka iyo wiil-ku... | the man and the boy... |
Read more about this topic: Somali Grammar, Morphology, Nouns
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