Comments:

1. 

    

   Alex:

   I am fortunate I never had to study Russian as a foreign language, since it’s my native one. 😉 Beats me how you guys who do memorize all the rules!

   And whenever there’s a rule, you can always come up with some exceptions. For example, ‘If a noun ends in «-а» or «-я» then it’s a feminine noun’ is usually correct, but what about such common words as ‘папа’, ‘дядя’,’мужчина’, which are all masculine? (Isn’t it ironic that the word ‘man’ ends in a typically feminine ending.) As well as all the numerous endearing forms of male names: Саша, Ваня, Юра, etc.

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Alex Alex, I was debating whether to include this issue in the post. Then I figured that giving the inquisitiveness of our readers and the expert knowledge of Russian by readers like Delia and Minority, I better leave something out for them to work on 🙂

2. 

    

   Delia:

   Alex: Good point! I was going to write about папа, дядя, мужчина too.
   Full names are easy, they usually follow the general rule Николай, Иван, Георгий, Михаил. But nicknames like Миша, Вася, Коля (just adding a couple to your list) have -a/я and have to be declined as masculine.

3. 

    

   Bill:

   And then there’s the infamous neuter -я nouns: имя, время, etc.

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Bill Bill, these are David’s favorites and he actually did a guest post on them some time back. Check it out at http://www.transparent/Russian/ten-little-words-part-1 and https://blogs.transparent.com/Russian/ten-little-words-part-2

4. 

    

   David Roberts:

   I hesitate to try to correct Delia’s Russian, but isn’t it the case that masculine nouns in -а and -я are declined like feminines? e.g. Полное имя Миши – Михаил. Мы с Сашой гуляли. But their accompanying adjectives and past tense verbs (which I think are historically short form adjective-past participles) are masculine, e.g. Молодой Коля сказал Мишу что он умнее Саши.

5. 

    

   David Roberts:

   In anwer to Bill: “And then there’s the infamous neuter -я nouns: имя, время, etc”. These are my favourites! For these we need Step 4a) If it ends in -мя it’s neuter. If it ends in -тя it’s neuter and its probably дитя (not much used, and then only in the nominative).

6. 

    

   Minority:

   > You’re right, I’ll need to change «холодное» to «холодный» since «кофе» is masculine (even though it ends in «-е»). The word «кофе», being of foreign origin, is an exemption from the rule and has to be memorized.

   Yelena, it seems you missed the law about “coffee” and some other words: http://www.polemics.ru/articles/?articleID=14104&hideText=0&itemPage=1
   Кофе черное с 2009 года. =)

   About your puzzle with “папа”, “дядя” and so on.. There’re two huge group of nouns – одушевленные [animated noun, which are used in talk about alive creature] and неодушевленные [inanimated noun].
   If you have an animated noun, the gender of the noun depends on creature’s sex. So, папа is a male person, that’s why it’s definitely a masculine noun. Note that words about animals are animated nouns too. So, when we talk about our pets, we use masculine or feminine gender, not neutral!

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Minority Minority, I’ve heard of this, but refuse to accept it, lol. Which opens up a very interesting question of Russian language abroad. You know, like when some of the Russian newspapers published by emigrants of the first wave kept ять even after it was gotten rid of in Soviet Russia. Thank you for an excellent explanation about папа, дядя, etc.

7. 

    

   Delia:

   David: You’re absolutely right! Thank you! and sorry for the confusing original message. What I mean was that nouns папа, дядя, мужчина, Саша, Петя, Миша are masculine and all the modifying adjectives, participles as well as verbs in the past should be masculine: мой папа пришел, твой дядя ушел, молодой мужчина звонил. The nouns themselves, however, decline like feminine: Я увидела высокого Сашу (Александра) и невысокую Сашу (Александру). In the sentence with the nicknames, only the adjectives show that first Саша is actually a boy and second Саша is a girl. If we look at the sentence with full names, we don’t need to see the adjectives as Александра (nominative Александр)and Александру (nominative Александра) show the genders as well as sex. I know the sentence sounds weird. I wrote it for Grammar demonstration only.

8. 

    

   Delia:

   Too bad we can’t edit our messages… I can see some typos now.
   What I MEANT was…
   Should always do a better proof reading. End of the semester… too many papers to grade.

9. 

    

   David Roberts:

   A bit of zoology, prompted by the translation of the joke:

   «Как отличить зайца от зайчихи? Взять за уши и отпустить. Если побежал, то заяц. Если побежала, то зайчиха.»

   [How to tell a male rabbit from a female rabbit? Grab it by the ears and let go. If it ran, it was a he-rabbit. If it ran, it was a she-rabbit.]

   A заяц is not a rabbit, it’s a hare. A rabbit is кролик. Кролик живет в норке под землей, заяц в гнезде на земле.

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @David Roberts David, I am going to fix that in the post. I think you told me this before as well, but I seem to be a terrible student (ironic, isn’t it?)

10. 

     

    Richard:

    Interesting post! I didn’t know about the gender of acronyms in Russian, I always just either put them in the masculine or simply avoided them! LOL

    Yelena, you wrote: By the time you finish reading this post you will know how to tell female rabbit apart from male rabbit. In the mean time, you’ll have to rely on the good old “pants = boy; skirt = girl” rule.

    You need to use the article “a”, i.e. “a female rabbit” and “a male rabbit”. Darn articles again!

    Also, what if the rabbits are in Scotland (Шотландия) and the male rabbits are wearing kilts (клетчатые юбки)? Just saying it could happen… 😀

    • 

       

      yelena:

      @Richard Thank you, Richard! You know my “love” for them articles 🙂

11. 

     

    Colin:

    I was taught that кофе was originally introduced into Russian as кофей and was therefore masculine (cf. музей), the й later being dropped in speech then in writing. Some people then assumed that the word was neuter (note: not neutral!) analogous to the regular neuter nouns ending in -e.
    Is there not another group of common gender nouns that can take either masculine or feminine adjectives in spite of ending in -a, depending on the gender of the person being referred to? Examples being коллега and пьяница.

    • 

       

      yelena:

      @Colin Colin, you are right. nouns such as пьяница can be either masculine or feminine, depending on the biological sex of the person they describe.

12. 

     

    Richard:

    Minority,

    So “хороший папа” is correct? Or “хорошая папа”?

    The word неодушевленные is very interesting. “Душа” means “soul” so does “неодушевленные” mean “without a soul”?

13. 

     

    Minority:

    Richard, exactly. “неодушевленный” is a thing without a soul.

14. 

     

    David Roberts:

    неодушевленный is a new addition to my vocabulary – thanks to Minority and Richard for the душa connection that helps fix it in my memory. Taking it further, the positive version одушевленный, animate, must originate as the pat passive particle of the perfective verb одушевить (lit. to confer soul, i.e to animate). Note the epenthetic л in
    (не)одушевленный.

15. 

     

    Delia:

    Colin: to add to the list
    учитель – учительница, but профессор, инженер, электрик, декан, директор and many other words meaning occupation do not have gender distinctions. So you should say: Она/Он профессор/инженер/декан/директор. Sometimes people Would say Она директорша which sounds disrespectful and this usage might even have the purpose to show that the speaker doesn’t respect the person he’s talking about. Она такая деканша!

16. 

     

    Alex:

    David, a couple of corrections:
    ‘Мы с Сашой гуляли.’ It should be ‘Сашей’ Молодой Коля сказал Мишу что он умнее Саши. It should be ‘Мише’.

17. 

     

    Colin:

    Delia: Thanks for these other examples. It’s interesting to see that the addition of an artificial feminine ending can then be meant pejoratively. English is also well into the process of dropping the feminine endings on words such as manageress, actress etc and German women are also more and more preferring not to add these endings to words such as Ärtztin (doctor), Pilotin (pilot) etc. when talking about their professions.

18. 

     

    Delia:

    Colin: I have more to add. With the nouns like профессор, экономист you will use adjectives in masculine even when the subject is feminine: Она хороший ученый. More words like коллега и пьяница – ябеда, плакса, забияка, разиня, скряга, жадина, зевака that can take adjectives in both feminine and masculine depending who you’re talking about. Он такой ябеда. Она большая забияка.

19. 

     

    Alex:

    And in informal Russian, people may say “Он такая ябеда.” “Он ужасная жадина”.

20. 

     

    Delia:

    My favorite one is зануда
    🙂

21. 

     

    Colin:

    My dictionary of slang gives: Он страшный зануда. I can see it becoming a favourite of mine too! Delia and Alex: This level of detail of the real language is fascinating and absolutely priceless to those of us who are trying to make sense of anarchic language speakers who refuse to be restricted by artificial rules:-)
    BTW: I also made a mistake above and didn’t notice it until now. The German word should have been Ärztin, the extra t slipped in unnoticed.

22. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Alex, thanks for correcting me on the instrumental of Саша – Сашей and dative of Миша – Мишу!

23. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Мише I mean!

24. 

     

    Dominic:

    At the very beginning, ” моя красивая жена посла в магазинЕ” you were missing the prepositional case marker…

25. 

     

    Richard:

    Minority,

    You mentioned that папа is a masculine noun despite ending in “a”, but what about adjectives and verbs? Do we use masculine or feminine adjectives and verbs when referring to папа?

    Sorry, but this has always confused me! :-\

26. 

     

    David:

    Dominic, when в relates to destination rather than location,the noun goes in the accusative, so моя красивая жена посла в магазин is correct. Here’s a sentence with both caes: Жена пошла в деревню (accusative of деревня, village) чтобы делать покупки в магазине.

27. 

     

    Delia:

    Richard: the nouns like папа, дядя only look and decline like feminine, but the adjectives and verbs used with them are masculine. Мой высокий красивый папа пошел в магазин. Твой пожилой дядя не звонил и не приходил. Мой сосед Коля написал письмо.
    David: моя жена поШла в магазин.

28. 

     

    Richard:

    Спасибо Делия!

    Если я понимаю правильно, можно писать:

    Я увидел твоего дядю (или папу).

    Also, my dictionary states that “дядя” is often used by children when addressing any adult male. Is that true?

29. 

     

    Delia:

    Richard: yes, in addition to meaning “uncle” (a parent’s brother or an aunt’s husband) it is usually used by children to address ANY male, known or a stranger. If the child knows the person (let’s say it’s a neighbor), he will be addressed дядя+name. Дядя Вася приходил вчера. If it’ s a complete stranger, then you could hear, “Папа, пришел какой-то дядя”.

30. 

     

    Delia:

    Richard, and YES! to your first question: я увидел твоего папу и твоего дядю, а еще я видел незнакомого мужчину (a stranger = not known man).

31. 

     

    Minority:

    Let’s add some more complexity to папа and дядя.)

    There words are always masculine. But you can make some feminine or neuter adjectives using there words:

    * папина дочка [Daddy’s girl. Usually we use such expression when we want to say that girl has a lot of common in temper with her father, or she’s indulged by her father]
    * папино пальто [Dad’s coat]
    * папин галстук [dad’s necktie]
    So, we created притяжательное прилагательное [possessive adjectives, they show something belongs to someone] from word папа, and this adjective changes its gender due to the noun it’s associated with.

32. 

     

    David:

    Minority: Re. possessive adjectives derived from people nouns like папа and дядя – in our Russkiy kruzhok we are working from a book (Ruslan 3) that covers these adjectives. Apparently they can also be formed from peoples’ diminutive names. The “heroine” of our book is called Людмилла, diminutive Люда, so adjective Людин, Людина, ирд. These adjectives decline like normal adjectives except for nominative and accusative, e.g. Людиного сына зовут Руслан. So your comment stimulated some useful revision.

    On the topic of diminutive names, can anyone think of any diminutives ending in -мя? Дымя or Димя for Дмитры perhaps? Or perhaps the name of a pet? If there are any, or could be any, are they, or would they be, neuter and decline like имя!?

33. 

     

    Minority:

    David, name with an ending -мя sounds more like Ukrainian, or Bulgarian, or some other slavic name, but not russian.
    We have some names with -ня: Ваня, Сеня, Лёня, Диня; with -дя: Федя; -ля: Коля, Толя, Оля; -ся: Вася, Тася; -тя: Катя, Костя, Настя
    but with -мя – no, it will be name with -ма in the end instead.)

34. 

     

    Rick Haller:

    Here is my understanding of the rules for determining gender of a noun from the ending of the nominative singular (aka dictionary) form.

    Since, in general, you will often be presented with a declined form (one with an ending denoting case and number), you may be able to “reconstruct” the dictionary form.

    1. If it ends in a hard consonant (no soft sign) or “й” it is masuline.

    2. If it ends in “а” or “я”, then it is feminine. BUT
    a.If it denotes a animate creature (human or animal), it follows the gender of the creature, e.g. “папа” is masculine, while “мама” is feminine, AND
    b.it is declined as feminine

    3. If it ends in “е” or “о” or “ё” or “мя” then it is neuter, BUT
    a. if it is a “borrowed word”, e.g., “тахи”, it is also neutor. Many borrowed words end in “o”, so they are already covered, .g. “метро”.

    a. the difference is they are usually “indeclinable”.

    That’s the easy part. What is not so easy is nouns ending in “ь” (soft sign). They are either masculine or feminine and there are no simple rules to categorize them. One is simply advised to “memorize them”.

    Of course there are both exceptions (idiosyncratic) and rules which apply to only a limited group of noun, but are true rules. They can be thought of as falling under “memorize them”. 😉 However, I believe the above rules will be correct for the vast majority of russian nouns.

    I would say that in general, Russian gender is pretty predictable, more so than what I remember of either German or French. I wish the declension and conjugation patterns were just as predictable. 😛

    Rick
    P.S. my native language is English, I know some German (more than Russian), but my Russian is little better than tourist russian though I know more about Russian grammar than that. And I like patterns of anything 😉

35. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Rick: I agree with you about predictability of Russian gender – not quite as easy as Spanish but easier than French or German. As for the declensions, they could be a lot worse (like Latin for example). I think German declensions are more difficult to get right, even though there are only 4 cases.

    Minority: What do you do with foreign names that don’t have appropriate endings for Russian genders? E.g would Dolores (Долорес) follow the masculine declension and would Alfonso (Алфонсо) decline as neuter? Or would they just not be declined?

36. 

     

    Richard:

    Thank you Delia! That’s an interesting use of “дядя” which is new to me. I think it reflects the friendliness and sense of community that Russians share.

37. 

     

    Richard:

    Minority,

    Большое спасибо! Очень итересно!

    How common are these short adjectives? Are they used more frequently than the genitive case (родительный падеж)?

    Are there rules for the formation (образование) of them? Where does the stress fall in the examples you gave?

    Can you do this with personal names (Igor, Natasha, Yevgeny, etc)?

    Много вопросов! LOL

    P.S. Make sure that you use articles in English. I guess the use of articles in English is as difficult for Russian speakers as Russian verbs of motion are for English speakers! 😉

38. 

     

    Richard:

    Rick and David, I think French verbs are easier than Russian verbs; just learn the conjugation patterns for the simple tenses, then learn the conjugation of avoir and être and the formation of the present and past participles for the compound tenses and you’re good to go!

    German? I looked at it once…thanks but no thanks! 😀

39. 

     

    Minority:

    David, such names (and sometimes not names too) are not declined. Some foreign words as “кофе” aren’t declined too. But sometimes we can make these words or names “more Russian”. Unfortunately, Dolores isn’t good example for this… The only thing that comes to mind is Долресушка, Долоресочка, but it sounds really bad. =)

40. 

     

    Minority:

    Richard, possessive adjectives are more common than the genitive case if you want to say that something belongs to someone. I think it’s the same as English. You can say “It’s a Richard’s coat” and “It’s a coat of Richard”, but the first phrase sounds much better. The same thing here. “васино пальто” = “пальто Васи”, but the first phrase is used more frequently. But it should be mentioned, that sometimes possessive adjective is hard to pronounce, for some long words, for example. In that case we use the genitive case.

    As you can see from above, we can make posessive adjectives from personal names. Rule for formation is easy: take the noun without its ending, add suffix -ин, and then add proper ending:
    пАпа => пАпин, пАпина, пАпино
    НатАша => натАшин, натАшина, натАшино
    кОшка => кОшкин, кОшкина, кОшкин
    дЯдя => дЯдин, дЯдина, дЯдино
    The stress falls at the same place.

41. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Minority, these lessons about “possessive adjectives” are brilliant! In return – something on English genitives. There’s almost enough for a full post on the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) blog in the two phrases you used as examples: ” “It’s a Richard’s coat” and “It’s a coat of Richard”. Actually neither of these would be used by native English speakers or writers. Until now I’ve never thought about the “rules” for such phrases. If we say “..a X’s Y” it would mean a Y belonging to a X – in other words, in “a Richard’s coat..” “a” relates to Richard, not to the coat. So such a phrase would only make sense in some hypothetical situation where a coat has been found and a label sewn inside tells you that the owner is called Richard (one of the many people who are called Richard).

    However, if we say “It’s Richard’s coat” that’s OK, but it means we’re referring to a specific coat – we’re not implying that he only owns one coat, but he only has/had one with him at the pub, when he came to visit, whatever. So the hostess at a party when people are leaving might say – is this your coat Fred? – and Fred might reply – no, I think that’s Richard’s coat. If we want to refer to a coat as one of several that Richard owns – say one that his wife is taking to be dry-cleaned – we would say “one of Richard’s coats” – so his wife would say “I’m taking one of Richard’s coats to be dry-cleaned.”

    Back to “It’s a Richard’s coat”. If we eliminate the apostrophe it becomes “It’s a Richards coat”. This could be OK, and it would mean that the coat was bought from or made by or designed by a shop or manufacturer or designer called “Richards” (a common English surname that could be the name of a shop or a company).

    Now to “It’s a coat of Richard”. If there were a brand of something like paint or wood polish that has the brand name “Richard” then you could apply a coat of it to a surface, and “It’s a coat of Richard” would be appropriate. But when we mean that it’s an outdoor garment that belongs to Richard this expression is wrong. However, add apostrophe s to make it “It’s a coat of Richard’s” and the phrase becomes OK, equivalent to “It’s one of Richard’s coats”. Why we may wonder, do we use a double genitive marker – of and ‘s ?
    I think it may be that “of” is a “set marker”, i.e. a coat of Richard’s = a member of the set “coats that belong to Richard”. We use this “double genitive” construction a lot, particularly in speech: “a friend of mine”, “this idea of yours”, “that accent of hers” etc [NB – I’m not sure myself whether yours and hers in these examples should have apostrophes before the s or not].

42. 

     

    Colin:

    I was going to comment on this subject, but am glad I waited as David covered it comprehensively. I would say that no apostrophe is necessary (or possible) on hers and yours in these sentences, however (cf. Is this yours? Is this hers? Is this mine?)

43. 

     

    Yelena:

    I love the discussion and all the excellent questions and answers. Minority, I think Долорес would quickly become Доля and from there it’d be Долечка, etc.

44. 

     

    David Roberts:

    There just might be a precedent for “Долорес would quickly become Доля and from there it’d be Долечка” Dolores Ibarruri (Долорес Ибаррури), known as La Passionara was a prominent communist in the Spanish civil war, who escaped to the USSR when Franco won, and had quite a prominent role, from her base in Moscow, in the international communist movement. Her son was killed in the battle of Stalingrad. She went back to Spain after Franco’s death and got elected to the Cortes. Died in 1989. So there must in the past have been a lot of Russian newspaper and other media mentions of her.

    Then again, there was the American musical “Hello Dolly” – I’ve always thought it was a diminutive of Dorothy, but maybe it was Dolores.

    Lena, the number of comments on блестящый пост has now reached the 50 mark!

45. 

     

    Colin:

    Er, блестящий…don’t forget the spelling rules:-)

46. 

     

    Minority:

    Oh my, I had some doubts about “Richard’s coat”. Next time I’ll listen to my inner voice (is it correct? Also I tried to use the word “intuition”, but couldn’t decide which verb to use with it). =)

    David, thanks for your explanation, though it’s hard to digest this cobweb of English genitives. And I guess it’s only a tip of the iceberg.

47. 

     

    Richard:

    Minority,

    Спасибо за объяснение!

    I noticed that you used “кошка” in your explanation, does this mean that you can make possessive adjectives from any animate noun? Cat, dog, etc?

    —> Also, in English you can say, “Next time I’ll follow my intuition“. 🙂

48. 

     

    David Roberts:

    блестящий not блестящый – I must have once learned the spelling rules, but nowadays I rely on intuition. Not always guaranteed 100% success!

49. 

     

    Yelena:

    David, the rule to keep in mind here is жи, ши, чи, щи пиши с буквой и (use letter “и”).

50. 

     

    David Roberts:

    жи, ши, чи, щи пиши с буквой и – I like this verse

    Maybe a second line: Вместо гы, кы и хы, всегда ги ки хи пиши

    More on these “possessive adjectives”. I’ve just realized that “I’ve just read Yelena’s post” would be “Я только что прочитал Ленин пост”. But there are also “genitive adjectives” derived from animal or person nouns like девичья in Ой ты песня, песенка девичья (a line from the song Катюша) or в кроличью норку (into the rabbit hole). For people at my level of Russian these adjectives can be very deceiving. They don’t occur often enough to get used to them easily, but when they do crop up they aren’t instantly recognizable as adjectives. I think the difference between these and the –ин adjectives is that the –ин adjectives describe something possessed by a specific individual whereas the кроличью (from кролик, rabbit) describe something associated with the type of animal or person in general. Like the difference between “a rabbit hole” and “a rabbit’s hole” (one dug by a specific rabbit). Someone correct me please if this is wrong or oversimplistic.