Class I

Nouns in Class I are mostly in the masculine gender. They derive from the old a-stem animate declension, whose initial prefix was the vowel, which nasalized at an early stage to [m] or [n]. As the animate gender split out, Class I nouns develop an emphatic [m] onset in contradistinction to the [n] onset of Class III.

Most nouns of this class set firmly into a clear masculine category, reflecting the patriarchal social order of the period. However, some commonly used Class I nouns preserve a more general sense of animacy, such as the noun matō , which usually translates to man but can mean mankind.

Paradigm

matō , man: