ģints – Latvian noun declension

Latvian noun forms of ģints

Noun: ģints
Hyphenation:
Gender: Feminine Declension:

Singular

Nominativeģints
Accusativeģinti
Genitiveģints
Dativeģintij
Instrumentalģinti
Locativeģintī
Vocativeģints

Plural

Nominativeģintis
Accusativeģintis
Genitiveģinšu
Dativeģintīm
Instrumentalģintīm
Locativeģintīs
Vocativeģintis

Sample Sentences

  • patriarhālā ģints (patriarchal family)
  • ģints iekārta (family order, organization, system)
  • ģints sabiedrība (familiar society (i.e., composed of families))
  • mātes ģints (maternal, matriarchal family (where descent goes through the mother's line))
  • tēvas ģints (paternal, patriarchal family (where descent goes through the father's line))
  • bet stāv pats nams! viņš dibināts uz klints, / un viņu sargā jaunā darba ģints (but the house itself stands! it is founded upon a rock, / and it is protected by the young working people)
  • atceries, atceries varoņu ģinti, / ugunīs gāja tie vārtus tev vērt (remember, remember the hero people, / they walked on fire to open the gates for you)
  • dzimtas iedala ģintīs... zaķu dzimtā ir divas ģintis: trušu ģints un zaķu ġints (families are divided into genera... in the hare family (Leporidae) there are two genera: the rabbit genus (Oryctolagus) and the hare genus (Lepus))
  • zemeņu ģintī izšķiram dārza zemeņu, meža zemeņu un spradzeņu sugas (in the strawberry genus we distinguish the garden strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa), the woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) and the spradzene (Fragaria viridis) species)

Etymology

Traditionally considered borrowed from Lithuanian genti̇̀s (“family, kin group, clan, tribe; relative”). But the Lithuanian form has en instead of in; in occurs only in some Eastern Lithuanian dialects. Also, in the 17th century, Latvian forms with in are attested in Semigallia (Zemgale), agreeing with the [in] in Old Prussian gyntos (“men, husbands”); it may therefore be that ģints was originally not a borrowing but an old Curonian word which later spread from Western Latvia to Semigallia. Note that older Semigallian dialects sometimes conserved initial ģ (> dz in standard Latvian): cf. place names like Ģintumi or Ģinuļi. If this is the case, then ģints, like Lithuanian genti̇̀s, reflects Proto-Indo-European *ǵen- (< *ǵenh₁-) “to create,” “to give birth” (via an unaltered Proto-Baltic *gint-, where the initial g, instead of ž, results from either the influence of the related stem *gʷem-, whence also dzemdēt “to give birth,” or from conservative dialectal variants).

Translations