So far we have learnt a-ending masculine and neuter nouns. There are no a-ending feminine nouns in Pali. On the other hand, all ā-ending nouns are feminine. i.e. there are no ā-ending masculine or neuter nouns. In case of other vowels – i, ī, u, ū and o – we find nouns in all the three genders, ending in these vowels. And there are no nouns ending in ‘e’.

This can be summarised as :

Apart from these vowel-ending nouns, there are nouns ending in vantu-mantu, agent nouns and some other nouns with abnormal declension patterns.

We will now learn the declension of ā-ending feminine nouns. These three declension patterns – a-ending masculine nouns, a-ending neuter nouns and ā-ending feminine nouns – will form the basis of all the declensions that we will learn throughout this course. We can memorise the other declension tables for various nouns by comparing them to these base patterns