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Russian Feminine Nouns

Grammar --> Russian gender --> Feminine Nouns

Russian feminine nouns may end in a consonant, a vowel or -ь. The vast majority of declinable feminine nouns end in -а/-я or -ь. Feminine nouns with other endings are, as a rule, indeclinable nouns borrowed from other languages.

Feminine nouns ending in a consonant

The group of feminine nouns ending in a consonant or -й mainly consists of indeclinable nouns. These are foreign names and surnames of women, names of newspapers, and several loanwords, meaning an adrress to a woman, such as мадам madam, мисс Miss, миссис Missis etc.

Feminine nouns ending in a vowel

Feminine nouns ending in -a/-я

In Russian, the vast majority of nouns ending in -a/-я are feminine, except those that are described in Masculine Nouns - II, and Neuter Nouns - II.

Feminine nouns ending in -о/-е/-и/-ю

These are some nouns ending in -o, -ю, -и, -е etc. which are mainly indeclinable words borrowed from other languages. In such instances, consultation with dictionary is recommended to ascertain their gender. This group of feminine nouns includes:

- Indeclinable nouns denoting female persons.

- Indeclinable nouns denoting names of rivers.

- Some indeclinable nouns denoting nonliving objects the grammatical gender of which depends on the gender of Russian generic words denoting the relevant class.

Feminine nouns ending in -ь

Most feminine nouns ending in -ь do not have specific markers which could be used to distingish them from masculine nouns ending in -ь.

Among feminine nouns ending in -ь, the following words have common features and may be united in the following groups:

- nouns denoting female persons

- nouns ending in -жь, -шь, -чь, -щь.

- nouns ending in -ость, -есть

In the vast majority of instances, consultation with dictionary is recommended to ascertain the gender of nouns ending in -ь.