Gender of nouns is a grammatical category, manifested in the ability to be combined with specific forms of compatible words. The category of gender can be expressed semantically (that is, in meaning, only for animate nouns), grammatically and syntactically. Semantically, all nouns are masculine, feminine and neuter. Words indicating animals and male persons are masculine (brother, grandfather, student, goose, rooster, horse); nouns naming animals and female persons (sister, grandmother, student, goose, chicken, horse) - to the feminine gender; animals and persons regardless of gender (bogeyman, monster, face (person), child) - to the neuter gender.

The gender of nouns is expressed grammatically by ending in the nominative case. This category of gender is characteristic of both animate and inanimate inflected nouns. In this case, in addition to the 3 main genera, a general genus is also distinguished. The differences between them are presented in the table:

The gender of nouns can be determined syntactically by the form of the agreed word, which depends on the noun. Thus, participles and adjectives that agree with masculine nouns end in -y, -y, -oh ( beautiful garden, singing boy, fighting soldier); with feminine nouns - in -aya, -aya (beautiful street, summer time); with neuter nouns - in -oe, -ee (beautiful sky, winter morning).

Also, the gender of nouns is determined using the ending of the predicate, expressed by a verb in the past tense in the subjunctive or indicative mood, or by a participle or Masculine gender - the predicate has a zero ending (the rain has passed, the plan has been completed); feminine- ending -a (the work is finished, the moon has risen); neuter - ending -o (the letter was received, the sun rose).

There are also Most of them belong to the neuter gender (depot, interview and all substantivized indeclinable nouns like “hello”, “hurray”, “yes”, “tomorrow”, “I don’t want”). The following cases are exceptions:

Ga (hectare), coffee, poppies, penalty, suluguni, sirocco, ecu, tornado, shimmy, as well as names of languages ​​(Bengali, Urdu, Suomi, Pashto, Hindi) are masculine;

Avenue, bere, salami, kohlrabi are feminine.

The gender of indeclinable nouns, such as newspapers, magazines, can be determined by the gender of the noun with the meaning of the generic concept (full-flowing Japanese (city) Tokyo, wide (river) Mississippi, published (newspaper) "The Times"). The gender of abbreviations must be determined by the gender of the main word (MGU - masculine - Moscow State University; UN - feminine - United Nations; CIS - neuter gender - Commonwealth independent states). It is impossible to establish the gender of nouns that are not used in the singular, but only in the plural, since they do not have a gender category (trousers, pitchforks, pasta, manger).

gender is determined by ending

feminine - ending a, zero (you can substitute she is mine)

masculine - zero ending (HE'S MY)

neuter - ending zero, ee (it's mine)

In order to determine the gender of a particular noun, you simply need to agree or simply apply the pronouns with it: mine, mine or my, or replace it with the word: he, she or it:

Thus, we get one of the three genders that exist in the Russian language.

For greater clarity and memorization, I will give below a table diagram, by referring to which you can quickly and correctly determine the desired genus.

In order to understand how to determine the gender of a noun, for clarity, let's use this picture



Now we see that to determine the gender of a noun, we can at help auxiliary words. But this is not the only thing that will help us. To determine the gender, we can also use hints in the form of the ending of a word. As a rule, feminine nouns have an ending in the form a or z, the neuter one has the endings e or i, but the masculine one either does not have an ending at all, or in ь or a consonant.

But. In any rule, there is what is called an exception. When determining the gender of a noun, there are also some buts, that is, exceptions that must be remembered.

You need to ask a question regarding a specific word, the gender of which needs to be determined: WHOSE / WHOSE / WHOSE is it / she / he, respectively?

I remember how we asked this question in class in chorus and also answered it together: it’s mine (neuter), she’s mine (feminine) or he’s mine (male).

The ending of the noun will not be particularly helpful in this matter, since, for example, often masculine words also have the so-called feminine ending a: manA, grandfather, etc.

The gender of a noun is determined by the ending of the word.

The feminine gender has the endings aya_ Additional question: she is mine

The masculine gender ends in _ (zero). Helpful question: he's mine

The neuter gender has the ending е_. Additional question: it can.

The gender of nouns is quite easy to determine.

Nouns female genders end in and I.(My Mother- the most best mom in the world. Noun - Mother refers to feminine nouns).

Nouns male genders end in hard consonant.(Today I dreamed of a beautiful dream. Noun - dream refers to masculine nouns).

Nouns average genders end in oh, yeah (Window it was open and you could hear him talking to someone. Noun - window refers to neuter nouns).

However, we should not forget about the gender of indeclinable nouns.

Determining the gender of nouns by their ending is not entirely correct.

And all because many words that end in a vowel (for example, -a-, -ya-, etc.)) are not always feminine.

And nouns that end with soft sign, can be either feminine or masculine.

To determine the gender of a noun, it is best to resort to the help of other parts of speech: an adjective or a pronoun.

Dad is mine; strict dad (masculine); the horse is mine; gray horse (masculine); the shadow is mine; small shadow (feminine), etc.

Thus, auxiliary words will help determine the gender of a noun.

Back in school, we were taught to determine the gender of a noun by asking the appropriate question to it.

Example: Pen whose? - My! This means the noun pen is feminine.

Chair whose? - My! Here the noun chair is masculine. There is also a neuter gender and it answers the question whose. For example task whose? My!

At school we were taught this:

If the word has a possessive form - HE IS MINE, then this is of course masculine.

If this very form sounds like - SHE IS MINE, then this is certain feminine.

And finally, if the word fits the wording - IT'S MINE, then this is certain neuter gender.

In order to determine the gender of a noun, it is worth resorting to the use of auxiliary words, which will help determine the gender of the noun.

As for such auxiliary words, they are listed in this tablet:



It turns out that if we take the word man, then to determine the gender we substitute the auxiliary word he is a man and we get the masculine gender accordingly.

In Russian, nouns come in three genders: masculine (table, young man, agreement), female (wall, bird, night) and average (window, happiness, metro). Correctly determining the gender of nouns is necessary in order to correctly coordinate them with other members of the sentence in speech. In most cases, no difficulties arise: we know, for example, that combinations a taxi pulled up, a sore spot are correct, whereas the phrases a taxi pulled up, a sore callus– this is a gross violation of the morphological norms of the Russian language.

However, there are nouns for which determining gender can be difficult. Next, groups of such nouns are considered and rules for determining gender are given.

1. Indeclinable nouns How to correct: funny pony or funny pony, sweet kiwi or sweet kiwi, beautiful Tbilisi or beautiful Tbilisi

Indeclinable nouns are those that do not change by case, i.e. have no case endings and retain the same form in any case and number. Their gender is determined based on which thematic group the word belongs to.

1. Words denoting inanimate objects are mostly nouns neuter:city ​​taxi, elegant muffler, crystal sconce, ripe mango, dangerous tsunami etc. The exceptions to this group will be:

- words male: sirocco (dangerous sirocco), suluguni (delicious suluguni), tornado (destructive tornado)

- words female: avenue (first avenue), kohlrabi (fresh kohlrabi), salami (delicious salami).

A number of inanimate nouns have two gender forms: coffee - masculine and, as an acceptable option, neuter (tasty/delicious coffee); penalty – masculine and neuter (fair/fair penalty).

2 . Words denoting animals, birds, fish, insects, should be considered nouns male(funny chimpanzee, white cockatoo, kangaroo jumped). However, if a female animal is meant, then the name refers to the feminine gender (the kangaroo was carrying a baby in its bag). Remember the exceptions: nouns female are iwashi (delicious iwashi), colibri (colorful hummingbird), tsetse (dangerous tsetse).

Language names(Hindi, Swahili, Bengali etc.) refer to masculine. Word Esperanto It is permissible to use both masculine and neuter gender ( famous/famous Esperanto).

Geographical names belong to the same gender as common nouns denoting generic concepts (i.e. according to the gender of words city, river, mountain and so on.). For example: Sochi – this is a city, a word city masculine, therefore the word Sochi also masculine (sunny Sochi); Mississippi→ river→j.r.

( deep Mississippi). Names of newspapers, magazines, enterprises, organizations and so on.). For example: etc. belong to the same gender as common nouns denoting generic concepts ( newspaper, magazine, company "Daily World" - newspaper, word newspaper feminine, hence the name "Daily World" also feminine ( Daily World published); "Geo"

→magazine→m.r.( interesting "Geo"). Most words for person (by profession, social status etc.) are nouns male

(even if we are talking about a woman): attaché (military attaché), croupier (experienced croupier), entertainer, maestro, rentier, refereeand so on. Words lady, miss,madam

Nouns refer to feminine (young lady, pretty miss). counterpart, incognito, protégé are

bigeneric: contains a whole set of rules that can be divided into five sections for ease of classification and study.

1. Determining the gender of inflected nouns. This is usually the simplest case for determining the gender of a noun, especially if the noun denotes a person whose gender is known to everyone: grandmother (f.b.) - grandfather (m.b.). As for definition of genus inanimate nouns and animal names, here it is customary to look at the ending: hammer - m.r., fence[a] - zh.r., word[o] - s.r., donkey - m.r., mouse[b] - zh.r.

Despite the relative simplicity of this rule, there are a certain number of exceptions, which we will consider below.

• There are a number of inanimate nouns that have changed gender from feminine to masculine over time. for example, just a couple of centuries ago, all of the following nouns were feminine: shoe, hospital, rail, jackboot, bracelet, poplar, report card.
• Along with this, there is an absolutely mirror phenomenon - nouns that were previously classified as masculine, but now they all require an adjective that answers the question “which one?” Such nouns include cuff, citadel, dachshund, attic.
• There are a number of words that are used equally in both masculine and feminine genders: epaulette - epaulette, pilaster - pilaster, psalter - psalter, spasm - spasma, desman and desman, hangnail - hangnail, dahlia - dahlia, aviary - aviary, banknote - banknote, padespan - padespan, plane tree - plane tree, pancake - pancake. Despite the fact that often one of the forms of these nouns is considered obsolete, their use is not a mistake.
• The gender of some special nouns is difficult, so we'll just list them with their gender. So, feminine nouns: leggings, sneaker, boot, sandal, sneaker, slipper, slipper, boots, reserved seat, sheet, pancake, parcel, mezzanine, veil, dumbbell, rosin, callus, flannel, fathom. Masculine nouns: shampoo, queen, truffle, tulle, calico, piano, roofing felt, guipure, curtain. Neuter nouns: tentacle, stuffed animal, monisto, bast, jam.

2. Determining the gender of indeclinable nouns. A number of rules also apply to this type of noun, each of which has its own exceptions:

• Most of indeclinable inanimate nouns has a neuter gender, regardless of the final vowel or its complete absence: jury, highway, interview, depot.
• Some of the indeclinable inanimate nouns still have a non-neuter gender, which refers to the old form of the word or gender concept: Avenue(street - residential district), coffee(coffee or drink - m.r.), sirocco(wind - m.r.), salami(sausage - f.r.), penalty(blow - m.r.), kohlrabi(cabbage - f.r.).
• There are a number of nouns whose gender depends on the person they denote: dandy - m.r., lady - f.r.
• Nouns denoting the name of a profession are usually masculine: attaché, entertainer. But if the profession refers to a female person, then the noun also changes gender to female: elderly doctor Valentina Pavlovna.
• The same applies to the indeclinable names of birds and animals. By default they are masculine: kiwi, hummingbird. But if we are talking about a female, then the noun also changes gender: The female chimpanzee happily jumped around the cage. Exceptions are nouns "Ivasi" And "tsetse" which are feminine (herring and fly).

3. Definition of the type of abbreviations. In the case of abbreviations, it usually plays a role to what gender the main word in the abbreviated phrase belongs to: RF ( Russian Federation), UN (United Nations), RIA (Russian information Agency) . Exception: TASS (m.r.) - Telegraph agency Soviet Union . If the abbreviation has become a common noun and is declined, then the general rules apply to such a word rules for determining the gender of a noun: university - m.r.

4. Determination of the gender of names of indeclinable proper names. The method of determining gender by common noun, which is a generic concept, also applies here: Sochi (city), Mississippi (river), Everest (mountain).

5. Determining the gender of compound nouns. When determining the gender of such words, you need to take as a basis a word that expresses the broader meaning of the noun: butterfly-admiral, telephone-machine, sofa-bed. Moreover, if, as in the case of a noun sofa bed, both concepts are equivalent, then we determine the gender by the first word: armchair-bed, cafe-restaurant.

Gender of nouns

Let us turn to the category of gender of nouns. Do you remember that in Russian the gender of nouns is determined on two grounds: at the end of the nominative case singular and according to the meaning of the noun, namely, according to the attribution of persons and animals called by this noun to their natural sex. Knowing what gender a particular noun belongs to is necessary in order to correctly change it by case and correctly combine it with other words in a sentence. That is why in dictionaries, indications of gender are a mandatory characteristic of nouns.

It is customary to distinguish five groups of noun words according to their gender:

Masculine nouns;

Feminine nouns;

Neuter nouns;

Common nouns ( crybaby, smart girl, sneak);

Nouns whose gender cannot be determined ( trousers, railings, pliers, jungle, yeast, rouge, debate, vacation, twilight, Alps).

TO masculine include nouns ending in a hard consonant or -i (house, father, balance, bank, barter, credit, tea, region), all nouns ending in -tel (teacher, writer, switch, indicator), names of months (January, February, April, June, July, September, October, November, December), borrowed nouns with stems in -л, -н, -рь (ensemble, shampoo, piano, vestibule, calendar).

TO lady, miss, include nouns ending in -а, -я (wife, earth, idea, game, computer science, migration, firm, function), nouns ending in a soft consonant stem (life, steel, night), as well as nouns ending in a hard hissing (youth, lies, rye, gouache, retouching, nonsense, falsehood, wilderness).

TO neuter include nouns ending in -о, -е (window, business, field, bankruptcy, godlessness, good, wealth, department, religion, application, lending, distribution), as well as all nouns ending in -mya (time, crown, burden, stirrup , udder, name, banner, flame, tribe, seed) and the noun child.

Exception constitute nouns with the ending -а, -я and nouns with a zero ending with a soft consonant, which belong to the masculine gender, as they denote male persons: uncle, youth, Muscovite, cabin boy, bear. The noun apprentice is also masculine.

So, in the modern Russian language there are traditionally three genders of nouns: masculine (envelope, law), feminine (article, bench) and neuter (punishment, crime). Usually, initial form the words already give an idea of ​​his generic affiliation. However, in some cases, determining the gender of nouns is difficult.

1. Errors are common when using indeclinable nouns (usually borrowed from other languages), in combination with adjectives or past tense verbs, due to incorrect combination of word forms by gender. Attempts to change such words lead to gross errors like: He came back for his coat. The gender of such words cannot be determined by the ending; it is determined by the meaning of the word, associated in most cases with the concept of animate/inanimate. Most inanimate indeclinable nouns belong to neuter words (foyer, cinema, coat, highway, khaki, pince-nez, boucle). Neuter gender have inanimate nouns that denote objects (highway, cinema, coat). The exceptions are the words coffee (m.r.), Hindi, Swahili (names of languages ​​- m.r.), avenue (street - zh.r.). TO lady, miss, are animate nouns denoting female persons (madam, miss, lady). TO masculine relate:

Animate nouns denoting male persons (dandy);

Animate nouns with the meaning of a position, title or profession traditionally associated with male labor (entertainer, attache, referee);

Nouns that are names of animals and are used without indicating their gender (kangaroo, chow-chow).

Animate indeclinable nouns can be used both as masculine and feminine words, depending on which gender they denote, i.e. they relate to the gender of a real person or animal. Wed: magnificent maestro; my vis-a-vis – my vis-a-vis; your protégé is your protégé; bright cockatoo – bright cockatoo.

From this general rule there are exceptions:

a) indeclinable nouns that have a generic name in the Russian language correspond to the gender of the latter: salami - f. R. (sausage), kohlrabi - w. R. (cabbage);

b) sometimes the gender of an indeclinable noun is determined by the gender of the word, which is common and inflected for such nouns: Avenue is defined as a feminine noun, since it correlates with the inflected feminine noun street, argot– with a synonymous masculine noun jargon, Suluguni– with a masculine noun (cheese), aloe– m.r. (flower), Hindi– m.r. (language), Capri– m.r. (island), Mississippi- and. R. (river), Tbilisi– m.r. (city);

c) the noun coffee is masculine, although recently colloquial speech it is acceptable to use it as a neuter noun: delicious coffee and tasty coffee, one coffee and one coffee;

d) the names of the letters refer to neuter words: Russian A, capital B; names of sounds – neuter or masculine: unstressed A – unstressed A; Note names are neuter: long mi;

2. If indeclinable nouns name living beings, their gender depends on the gender of the latter ( young - young kangaroo, Durnovo reported - reported, beautiful - beautiful counterpart).

3. Some nouns ending in -а/-я are used in relation to both male and female persons and, as a rule, have an evaluative character. Such nouns are words general kind

(slob, smart girl, crybaby, bully, smart girl, good fellow, greedy, glutton, sleepyhead, sneak).

General nouns denoting males agree with the masculine forms of adjectives, pronouns and past tense or subjunctive verbs, and nouns denoting females agree with the corresponding feminine forms. Wed: He's so smart! She's so smart! My colleague carefully read the documents. My colleague carefully read the documents.

4. Considerable difficulties arise when using nouns denoting persons by occupation or profession. Nouns naming a person by profession or position are used in the masculine gender, regardless of the gender of the person in question ( Vasilyeva is a very young professor). Masculine nouns denoting male and female persons doctor, engineer, technologist, banker, assistant, manager, businessman, as a rule, agree with adjectives in the masculine form (i.e., by ending), and with verbs - in the masculine or feminine form, depending on whether the person is male or female (i.e., by meaning). For example: Experienced lawyer Ivanova won the case. - Experienced lawyer Ivanov won the case; The local doctor Smirnova visited the patient. - The local doctor Smirnov visited the patient. In some cases, parallel forms exist in the language ( orderly - nurse, weaver - weaver). Nouns have no opposition by gender seamstress, laundress, manicurist, typist, typist. Shape type conductress, cashier, director, cook have a colloquial coloring.

5. Some nouns have gender variants. For example, giraffe and giraffe, jackboot and jackboot. Often only one option is recommended as stylistically neutral ( hall - hall (obsolete), hall (simple), gelatin - gelatin (prof.).

6. Nouns used only in the form plural, have no gender ( sleigh, scissors, gates, trousers, glasses).

7. Rod compound nouns type theater-studio, novel-newspaper determined by the generic characteristic of the component that has greater informative significance.

8. The gender of indeclinable geographical names correlates with the gender of the corresponding common noun: Sochi, Tbilisi(city

– m.r.), Ontario(lake - s.r.), Mississippi(river - river).

9. The gender of indeclinable abbreviations is determined by the gender of the main word of the phrase ( SGUA - academy - zh.r., NCFU - university - m.r.). However, if there are no associations of the abbreviation with generating words left in people’s minds, it receives gender, like an ordinary word, according to the formal indicator and is classified as masculine in the case zero ending (Housing office, university, although “office”, “establishment”), to the neuter gender if the ending is -o ( RONO, although "department").

10. In the Russian language, nouns are actively used, which are formed as a result of adding two words. Such compound nouns can be animate or inanimate ( Governor General, female astronaut, conference room). For animate nouns, gender is determined by the word indicating the gender of the person ( female astronaut- and. R.; miracle hero– m.r.). For inanimate nouns, gender is determined by the gender of the first word ( museum-apartment– m.r.; robe dress- Wed R.; amphibious aircraft– m.r.; boarding school- and. R.). If a compound noun contains an indeclinable noun, then the gender is determined by the gender of the inflected word ( cafe-dining room- and. R.; comedy-buff- and. R.; taxi car– m.r.).

11. Gender of nouns formed using suffixes -ish-, -chic-, is determined by the gender of the noun from which these nouns are derived ( voice - voice: m.r.; oar - oar: cf. R.; snake - snakes: female form; brother - little brother: m.b.; letter - letter: cf. R; newspaper - newspaper: zh.r.).