With regard to declension, the stem is the part of the declined word to which case endings are suffixed. In the alpha or first declension feminines, the stem ends in long "a", which is parallel to the Latin first declension. In Attic-Ionic the stem vowel has changed to "ē" in the singular, except (in Attic only) after "e", "i" or "r". For example, the respective nominative, genitive, dative and accusative singular forms are "gnome", "gnomes", "gnome(i)", "gnomen", "opinion" but "thea", "theas", "thea(i)", "thean", "goddess".