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| Hi everyone! Lena here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Russian questions. | |
| The question for the day is: How to tell the gender of a noun? | |
| In Russian, the gender of nouns is determined by the endings, suffixes, and some other indicators. | |
| However you can accurately tell the gender of a noun only if it’s in the singular number of the nominative case. | |
| Let me try to explain to you how it all works. | |
| Masculine nouns (names included) usually have at their end either a consonant (including -й (j)) or the soft sign, which, as you remember, doesn’t have a sound of its own. | |
| For example, Круг (Krug, “Circle”), Чай (Chay, “Tea”), Иван (Ivan, “Ivan”, that’s a Russian male name). | |
| It’s important to mention that diminutive or short Russian male names usually end in a vowel, in either ‘a’ or ‘ya’. | |
| For example, the diminutive of the name Anton is Antosha, the diminutive of Dmitry is Dima, the diminutive of Mikhail is Misha, and the diminutive of Ivan is Vanya. | |
| Feminine nouns (names included), usually end with either vowels or the soft sign; for example Книга (Kniga, “Book”), Земля (Zemlya, “Land”), Мать (Mat’, “Mother”), Елена (Yelena, “Elena,” that’s a Russian female name). | |
| And feminine nouns usually have the suffix -ость (-ost’): Радость (Radost’, “Happyness”), Верность (Vernost’, “Loyalty”), Честность (Chestnost’, “Honesty”). | |
| Finally, neuter nouns have vowels -о (o), -е (ye), and -ё (yo) as their endings. | |
| For example, Окно (Okno, “Window”), Зелье (Zel`ye, “Potion”), Ружьё (Ruzh`yo, “Rifle”). | |
| Certain suffixes can also serve as gender indicators. | |
| For example, the typical masculine suffixes are -тель (-tel’), -онок (-onok), and -ёнок (-yonok). | |
| Строитель (Stroitel', “Builder”), Оттенок (Ottenok, “Tint”), Котёнок (Kotyonok, “Kitten”). | |
| And now we’ll talk a bit about the cases when adjectives act as nouns. | |
| The examples of this are Караульный (Karaul'nyy, “Guard”), Столовая (Stolovaya, “Dining room”), Сладкое (Sladkoye, “Sweets”). | |
| Again, similarly to the regular nouns, such words have typical endings: | |
| the masculine ending is ‘ый’ (with the consonant at the end) - Караульный | |
| The feminine ending is ‘aya” (with the vowel at the end) – Столовая | |
| The neuter ending is ‘oe’ (with the vowel “e” at the end) - Сладкое | |
| You may find an etymological dictionary to be a very useful tool in mastering Russian noun genders. | |
| This kind of dictionary explains the meaning and the origin of words and have all the nouns tagged with their respective genders. | |
| Pretty interesting, right? | |
| If you have any more questions, please leave a comment below! | |
| До встречи! (Do vstrechi!) “See you soon!” |
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