Gothic is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function.
An important distinction in many of the declension classes below is the difference between "short" and "long" stems.
A varied set of nouns have two stems, one occurring with endings that are null or begin with a consonant (the nominative, accusative and vocative singular) and another that occurs with endings beginning with a vowel (all but the previously listed forms).
One common situation leading to two-stem nouns is the automatic devoicing of voiced fricatives at (or near) the end of a word, e.g.: More information about the exceptions in the -a declension can be found at page 82, §175 of Grammar of the Gothic Language written by Joseph Wright.
Properly, there should be a distinction in the genitive singular between short-stem -jis and long-stem -eis, as for the masculine nouns, but -jis has mostly taken over.
Note that the neuters in this declension can be said to follow the two-stem pattern (e.g. kuni vs. kunj-) described above for a-stems.
Other remnants are the invariant neuter adjective filu "much" (with an adverbial genitive filáus), and qaíru or gáiru "spike, goad", occurring once in a gloss.
leiþu "cider, fruit wine" is attested only in the accusative singular and without any context to infer its gender, so it may have been masculine or neuter.
The declension loosely parallels the Latin nouns in -ō, genitive -ōnis/-inis, which shares the same Indo-European declensional origin (the Greek descendant being the more regularized -ōn, -onos class).
The Gothic language borrowed the practice of denoting [ŋɡ] by gg and [ŋk] by gk from the Koine Greek in which the New Testament was originally written.
Note the following irregularities: The other five feminine nouns are alhs "temple", baúrgs "city", brusts "breast", miluks "milk", and spaúrds "racecourse".
In addition, some adjectives are always declined weak or strong, regardless of any accompanying articles.
Similar to the situation with nouns, the ja-stem adjectives are divided into two subtypes, depending on whether the stem is short or long.
This declension has only the following extant adjectives: aljis "other", freis "free" (stem frij-, see below), fullatōjis "perfect", gawiljis "willing", midjis "middle", niujis "new", sunjis "true", ubiltōjis "evil-doing", and unsibjis "lawless".
This declension has only five extant adjectives: aírzeis "astray", alþeis "old", faírneis "old", wilþeis "wild", and wōþeis "sweet".
The following adjectives of this type are extant (along with a few others): analáugns "hidden", anasiuns "visible", andanēms "pleasant", áuþs "desert", brūks "useful", gafáurs "well-behaved", gamáins "common", hráins "clean", sēls "kind", skáuns "beautiful", skeirs "clear", suts (?sūts) "sweet".
The following adjectives of this type are extant: aggwus "narrow", aglus "difficult", hardus "hard", hnasqus "soft", kaúrus "heavy", manwus "ready", qaírrus "gentle", seiþus "late", tulgus "steadfast", twalibwintrus "twelve years old", þaúrsus "withered", þlaqus "soft".
Additional pronominal forms are multiplier agrees in case Hund and þūsundi can mean either "100" and "1000" or "120" and "1200", depending on scale.
Numbers below 20 behave as adjectives, whereas those starting at 20 behave as nouns and govern the genitive case of an associated object, e.g. dagē fidwōr tiguns "for forty days", fimf þūsundjōs waírē "five thousand men", miþ twáim tigum þūsundjō mannē "with twenty thousand men".
Higher numbers from fidwōr "four" through niuntaíhun "nineteen" are normally undeclined, but can be declined as -i stems, e.g. dative fidwōrim, genitive *fidwōrē.
The isolated form tweihnái "two each" exists, declined as a plural strong adjective.
Otherwise, distributive numerals are expressed using prepositional phrases, e.g. bi twans aíþþáu máist þrins "by twos or at most by threes"; ana ƕarjanōh fimftiguns "by fifties in each (company)"; insandida ins twans ƕanzuh "he sent them forth two and two".
Extant are áinfalþs "onefold, simple"; fidurfalþs "fourfold" (note, not *fidwōrfalþs); taíhuntaíhundfalþs "hundredfold"; managfalþs "manifold".
They are formed by combining the cardinal or ordinal with the noun *sinþs "time" (lit.