Tag Archives: animate nouns
Wanted Dead Or Alive: Noun Animacy in Russian Posted by Maria on Dec 24, 2015
You might have learned at some point that all nouns in Russian are either animate (одушевле́нные) or inanimate (неодушевле́нные). Roughly speaking, living things are animate and/or sentient: студе́нт, ко́шка, де́ти; and non-living things are inanimate: стена́, телефо́н, письмо́. This subject has been covered on this blog before. As it turns out, determining whether a…
Another Russian Eternal Question: Soul [«одушевлённый»] or No Soul [«неодушевлённый»]? Posted by josefina on Jul 15, 2009
Pictured above is «Марфа» [Marfa], a handmade «кукла» [doll] given to me by my very talented and close friend in Tomsk in May earlier this year. Even though I would argue – being as it is that I’m an adult nowadays – that Marfa in her capacity as doll is «неодушевлённое существительное» [‘without soul’; an…