Aril's second declension consists of most nouns which end in consonants, unless they end with liquids (in which case they are fourth declension; or unless they are abstract or 'general' nouns, in which case they are fifth declension).
Like the first declension, this second grouping of nouns once had a full complement of sixteen cases with both singular and plural forms, but only four (nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative) are now used.
(Just a quick review, in case you don't already know the linguistic terms:)
Nominative- Subject case.
Genitive- Possessive case, 'house's,' 'horse's.'
Accusative- Direct object case.
Dative- Indirect object case.
These cases allow Aril to have a much freer word order than English in general. When a word order may be needed, as when a sentence has several objects, or the speaker wishes to emphasize the action, or if the object cases might possibly be mistaken for the subject otherwise (especially a problem with this declension; see below), the usual order is:
VOS: Verb + Object + Subject.
or:
VD(G)A(G)S(G): Verb + Dative + (any genitive describing the dative) + Accusative + (any genitive describing the accusative) + Subject +(any genitive describing the subject).
Regular adjectives, as well as genitives, almost always go after those things they modify; and adverbs come after their verbs. Those that come in front are so noted in the dictionary. If an adjective or adverb is separated for some reason from its modified, an adjective must be marked to agree with the case of its modified so that a listener will know what it refers to. An adverb must be marked as an adverb.
(If there is only one adverb but two or more verbs in the sentence, then the adverb must come near the verb it describes. If it occurs elsewhere in the sentence, then it is asssumed to refer to all verbs).
The cases of the second declension are as follows:
Nom. cas, leaf casi, leaves
Gen. casasa, leaf’s cassan, leaves’
Acc. cam, leaf cais, leaves*
Dat. casic, to a leaf casoim, to leaves
*If the word in question has only one vowel, it becomes ai. If the word in question has more than one, the vowel closest to the end consonant becomes ai. Those words that have ai in the final position already have identical plural nominative and accusative forms, as olain, 'waves.'
The second declension has more irregularities than most of the others; such words are so noted in the dictionary.
