
How to distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns in Russian?
Russian nouns have three genders: feminine, masculine, and neutral. How to distinguish between them? The rule is quite simple: You need to look at the noun ending. If a noun belongs to the feminine gender, it ends in -а or -я. When you see these letters at the end of a word, it’s likely a feminine noun.
How do you know if a word is masculine or feminine?
Masculine words ends with a й or a consonant (we will also discuss the exceptions of the letter ь - the soft letter). Note: Some of the words ending on е and о (typical Neuter gender ending) belong to Masculine gender.
How do you find the gender of a Russian word?
In Russian, as with many other languages, each noun is assigned a gender. You can normally determine the gender in Russian by looking at how the word is spelt. Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral). Russian Language Home Keyboard
Is day masculine or feminine in Russian?
Nouns ending in the soft sign -ь can be either masculine or feminine: день (day - masculine), жизнь (life - feminine). The best way to tell the gender of such nouns is to memorize it as you progress with your Russian language study.

How do you find if a word is masculine or feminine?
Some endings are typically masculine, such as –on, but it will often be feminine if you find it coming after a letter s or the letter c. Nouns that end in consonants like t, x, d, l, f, m or s, etc. tend to all be masculine words.
What words are masculine in Russian?
Masculine words end in a consonant (б, в, г, д, ж, з, й, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х, ц, ч, ш or щ).
Do Russian words have gender?
Gender in Russian. Russian distinguishes between three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Gender agreement is expressed as a suffix, and appears on singular adjectives, verbs in the past tense, demonstratives, participles, and certain pronouns.
Is chair masculine or feminine in Russian?
masculineRussian on the other hand, has a gender for every noun. So if you think that table is genderless, you're wrong. Chair is a masculine noun in Russian, and you refer to it as “him”.
Is coffee feminine in Russian?
There are also some exceptions to this rule, for example, the word “coffee.” In Russian, “coffee” is “кофе” (kofe). As you can see, it ends with–е, so it should belong to the neutral gender. However, it is masculine. The reason is that in earlier times, the word “кофе” was written as “кофий” (kofii).
Is Russian hard to learn?
Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. This is mostly true, if you have no knowledge of other Slavic languages (e.g. Bulgarian or Czech). The grammar rules in Russian are very complex and have numerous exceptions.
Is Notebook feminine in Russian?
Words ending with ь For example, the word for dictionary (словарь) is masculine but the word for notebook (тетрадь) is feminine.
What language has no gender?
There are some languages that have no gender! Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, and many other languages don't categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans.
How to tell if a word is masculine or feminine?
From the dictionary form of a noun, here is how you can tell what the gender is: 1. Look at the last letter of the word: 2. If it is a consonant, or “й”, the word is masculine. 3. If it is “а” or “я” it is feminine. 4. If it is “о” or “е” it is neuter.
What are the genders of Russian?
Gender of Russian nouns. In Russian, as with many other languages, each noun is assigned a gender. Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral). In the cases of words like “father” these relate to physical gender.
Do you have to know the gender of a noun in Russian?
In the case of other objects like “pen”, “cup”, “house”, there is no physical meaning attached to the gender. However you will still need to know the gender because it affects how words are formed. Luckily, unlike many languages, in Russian it is almost always possible to tell what the gender of a noun by it’s spelling.
How many genders are there in Russian?
Each noun in Russian language is assigned a gender. As in many other languages, Russian has three genders:
What letter does roast end with?
Roast – жаркое – ends with vowel letter “ е”. Important to know: In the cases of words like “father – папа”, “uncle – дядя”, “grandfather – дедушка”, “man – мужчина” and “coffee – кофе“ etc., these relate to physical gender. So keep in mind that the formation of nouns has feminine gender but meaning is masculine.
Why do we learn genders in Russian?
You need to learn genders in Russian because they have an effect on other words in a sentence. There are three different genders, and each of them behaves a little differently than the others. In short, there are two types of words that revolve around the gender of any specific noun: Adjectives. Verbs (in the past tense)
Is Russian gender regular?
But that doesn’t mean that there are no exceptions. Luckily, the exceptions are also pretty regular. Basically, there are a few words you need to remember, but I’ve found that this comes easy after you’ve been practicing Russian for a while. You may need to check this section several times, but eventually you’ll remember them.
How many genders are there in Russian?
There are three genders in Russian: masculine, feminine and neuter. You can usually determine the gender of a noun by its ending. Here are some basic rules, although exceptions exist:
Is there a definite article in Russian?
Remember that there are no definite or indefinite articles in Russian. The meaning of English articles "a", "an" and "the" is determined from the context and some other means, including word order, the use of plurals, demonstrative pronouns and cases.
Do Russian adjectives agree with nouns?
The basic rule is that Russian adjectives agree with the nouns they describe in gender, number and cases.

Masculine
- Masculine words ends with a й or a consonant (we will also discuss the exceptions of the letter ь- the soft letter). Note: Some of the words ending on е and о(typical Neuter gender ending) belong to Masculine gender. For example: кофе(coffee), манго(Mango), торнадо(Tornado), бренди (Br…
Words Ending on The Soft Letter - Ь
- Sometimes you will come across words that end on the soft letter, and you won't know be able to tell the gender of the noun. Nouns ending on ьcan be either Feminine or Masculine. It can also be both genders at the same time. Unfortunately, there are no rules to determine the gender in these cases, so you'll have to learn them by heart. To get started, take a look at these rules that we hav…
Masculine Nouns That End on -А Or -Я
- There are exceptions where masculine nouns can end with -а or -я, just like feminine nouns. Masculine words ending on -а or -я follow the same declension patterns as the feminine nouns do.
Final Tip
- One easy thing you can do to determine the noun genders is to listen to the adjectives that modify the nouns in a sentence. If the adjective is masculine, then the noun will be masculine as well.