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Lesson: What's your job? - Grammar: Gender of nouns

Vocabulary
Он – студент . He is a student.
Она – студентка . She is a student.
Here's a tip
As you may have already noticed in the unit on professions, Russian nouns have a
gender.
Nouns can be feminine, masculine or neutral.
We can tell which gender a noun is by looking at its ending. Have a look at the examples
below.
masculine: , , дом день музей

feminine: , книга семья

neutral: , яблоко море

When we are talking about people, their gender always helps us recognise the gender
of a noun.
c , - male person
тудент актёр

,
студентка актриса- female person
Most nouns with the following endings are masculine:
nouns ending in a consonant: (a house) дом

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 nouns ending in - : (a museum)
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й музей

nouns ending in - : (a day)

ь день

Most nouns with the following endings are feminine:

nouns ending in - : (a book)
а книга

nouns ending in - : (a family)

я семья

nouns ending in - : (night)

ь ночь

Did you notice that both masculine and feminine nouns can end with - ? ь

There are a few rules that can help us to understand the logic but in most cases you will
need to memorise the gender of the noun together with the word you learn.
Most nouns with the following endings are neutral:
nouns ending in - : (a window)
о окно

nouns ending in - : (a sea)

е море

nouns ending in - : (time)мя время

Now that you have learned the basic rules, let's start practising.
Now you know the general rules! Of course, there are exceptions and, in some cases,
you need to remember the gender of the words you learn as you go.
For example, there are a number of masculine words ending in - /- . All of them refer to а я
a male person. Have a look at some of them below.
мужчина (a man)
юноша (a young man)
дядя(an uncle)
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папа (dad)

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