Noun. Feminine nouns

Hello, dear student!

Today I am going to tell you some rules, concerning Nouns in the Russian language, and namely about Gender. I would like to show you how we could distinguish it and form different ways to show a proper gender of nouns. As far as you know, Noun indicates an object or a subject, moreover, it is important to mention that in Russian, pets and animals also refer to animate nouns as people do. Let's look the example: a noun "cat" - кошка [koshka] is an animate noun and is female (gender). So, the main question is: how properly we could distinguish the Gender. Well, the only things which you need are attention, good memory and practice. Let's start with Feminine (gender)

In order to use nouns and know their gender, first thing is to look at their endings (In Russian, the endings of nouns are usually vowels, but there is also "zero" ending in some words, we are going to look at them in next articles). Therefore, some nouns, which are considered to be feminine, the endings are always "а/я" or "ь", for example:

"Дочка" [Dochka] - Daughter
- we could see the ending А in this word, so we remember the rule, regarding feminine nouns, that is why the word "дочка" is feminine.

Сессия [Sesiya] - Session
- this word has ending Я, so, concerning the rule it is feminine.

Ночь [Noch'] - Night
- the same with this word

I would like to draw your attention to that fact that there are many exceptions in the Russian language, when some endings belonging to feminine (gender) in fact are masculine, for example, the word "гость". We can see that in spite of the ending "ь", which is feminine, but belongs to the masculine nouns. Moreover, there are many words in Russian, which already belong to feminine nouns, such words as:
бабушка [babushka] a granny
жена [zhina] - a wife
дочка [dochka] - a daughter
сестра [sistra] - a sister
девушка [devushka] - a lady
женщина [zhenshina] - a woman
So, their physical attributes refer them to the feminine gender.

Finally, I would like you to practice with some words in the definition of their gender: "Конференция"[kanfirentsiya], "сумка" [sumka], "мама"[mama], "луна"[luna], "печь" [ pech'] (as a noun), "речь"[rech'], "ручка"[ruchka], "краска"[kraska], "машина"[mashina], "племянница"[plimyanitsa], "тумбочка"[tumbachka], "красавица"[krasavitsa].