Déclinaison

Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe.

Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl. Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form (girl) exactly the same.

By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man/men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly.

For nouns, in general, gender is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and the gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves.

There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonymBriton. Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates, they are not specifically treated as forms of the same word, and thus are not declensions.

Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the first person "I":

Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition, or case. Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider who, which is subjective, and the objective whom (although it is increasingly common to use who for both).

The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following:

The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century. However, the use of singular they is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. "someone left their jacket behind") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. "If someone wants to, then they should"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female (see gender-nonbinary). The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.

Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for degree of comparison. The unmarked form is the positive form, such as quick. Comparative forms are formed with the ending -er (quicker), while superlative forms are formed with -est (quickest). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with more (more beautiful) and most (most modestly). See degree of comparison for more.

Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender.