Search
I have already written the article about feminine gender of nouns, and now we will discuss masculine and neuter genders. For a start, it is necessary to get through gender declension of nouns in order to form a sentence correctly, write a word without mistakes and use it in speech later on. When you are able to determine noun gender correctly, you will not have any difficulties with case inflection in future. So, let's begin with masculine gender:
Usually it is enough to look at word flexions in order to determine gender of nouns: masculine gender ends with a consonant – such flexion is often called "zero inflexion" – or in letter "Й" [Y]. There is a category of words which end with letter "Ь" – you should memorize them. There is also a special category of words which does not depend on flexions, and meaning plays key role, for example: "папа", "дядя", "воевода", "дедушка", "парень", "молодой человек" – these words belong to masculine gender according to a physical attribute.
Let's look at more detailed examples:
"КафетериЙ" – ends with letter "Й", that's why it belongs to masculine gender.
"СтуЛ" – ends with consonant "Л" or as we've decided to denote – has "zero inflexion" (usually words end with a vowel in the Russian language, and if a word ends with a consonant, we call such flexion "zero" one), that's why it belongs to masculine gender.
"ГостЬ" – ends with "Ь", but belongs to masculine gender. In order to memorize such words, you need to turn to dictionary, where you can find out form and gender of a noun.
Neuter gender has the flexion "o/e", for instance:
"НебО" – word ends with letter "O", that's why it belongs to neuter gender of nouns.
"СтеклО" – there is also the letter "O" at the end, that is why the word "стекло" belongs to neuter gender.
"ВареньЕ" – word ends with letter "Е", and we already know that the flexion "O" or "E" indicates neuter gender.
But there some words-exceptions in the Russian language which should be memorized. They belong to neuter gender regardless of flexions – there are only 10 of them:
- ДитЯ
- ВремЯ
- ВымЯ
- ПламЯ
- ТемЯ
- ЗнамЯ
- ИмЯ
- СтремЯ
- СемЯ
- ПлемЯ
You can notice that all these words end with letter "Я", but in spite of it they belong to neuter gender.
Finally, there are some words for practice: arrange them according to a gender:
"Поле", "горе", "море", "зеркало", "дерево", "молоко", "грач", "зонт", "рисунок", "соболь", "пень", "огород", "баклажан", "стол", "рай", "май", "русло", "хозяин", "солнце", "пейзаж", "куст", "имя", "полено".
