# Feminine "-a" suffix in Semitic and Romance Languages



## tFighterPilot

Is it a coincidence that this suffix in both these unrelated language families? Is there some deep psychological reason maybe?


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## perevoditel

It is present also in Scandinavian and Slavic languages. Probably something in PIE? And you can't say those languages are not unrelated, all come from PIE.


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## tFighterPilot

Ok, but Semitic languages are still not related to them.


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## Konanen

Although, one must say, that Arabic verbs express muliebrity with "(-)t(-)", "-i" and "-n-" respectively.
But, that is a whole different story.
It is still curious, why feminine nouns mostly have the suffix "-a".

EDIT: *<Moderator note: Moved here>*


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## fdb

In Semitic the primary marker of the feminine gender is –t- or –at-, compare Arabic ibn-un ‘son’, and bin-t-un or ibn-at-un ‘daughter’. The feminine marker –a results from the loss of –t- and the case ending in pausal position (ibnatun > ibna). In Indo-European there is a contrast –o- vs. –ā- for masculine and feminine. Seen in this way, the two families are actually very different.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> In Semitic the primary marker of the feminine gender is –t- or –at-, compare Arabic ibn-un ‘son’, and bin-t-un or ibn-at-un ‘daughter’. The feminine marker –a results from the loss of –t- and the case ending in pausal position (ibnatun > ibna). In Indo-European there is a contrast –o- vs. –ā- for masculine and feminine. Seen in this way, the two families are actually very different.


As a Hebrew native speaker, tFigterPilot is certainly aware that "t" was the original Semitic feminine marker. I think his question was why several languages (Hebrew/Arabic and Romance languages) developed (seemingly independently) _-a_ as a feminine marker.

@tFigterPilot: Are you aware that many linguists think that the PIE feminine has developed out of a collective inanimate form? I.e. the use of the _-a_ suffix as neuter plural and as feminine singular marker is probably not by accident and the neuter plural meaning is the original one.


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## perevoditel

Sorry, that was a bit _faux pas_. Thought that Semitic languages belong to Indo-European... Nevermind.

I think you must check when -a suffix appeared in Semitic languages first. In Western Europe it can be Latin with it's -a suffix for feminine adjectives and nouns. In Sanskrit there are -a, -is, -os suffixes, in Old Church Slavonic it was -a, -i and -'/-ь (soft sign). So we can assume first appearing of -a suffix in about 1000-500 BC. How about Semitic languages?

EDIT:

@Konanen: The same with Norwegian, names of places are feminine, if they don't have masculine root (ie. High Hill is masculine, because _hill_ is masculine in Norw.).


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## perevoditel

Why death have different sex in different cultures, then? ^^


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## merquiades

perevoditel said:


> It is present also in Scandinavian and Slavic languages. Probably something in PIE? And you can't say those languages are not unrelated, all come from PIE.



One thing I've noticed in Russian (it may be present in other slavic languages too) is the masculine genitive and accusative singular have the ending -a.  I found it interesting coming from a Romance language background where for example  Robert / Roberta reveal gender differences.  In Russian  "of/ from Robert" and "I see Robert" become "Roberta".


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> As a Hebrew native speaker, tFigterPilot is certainly aware that "t" was the original Semitic feminine marker. I think his question was why several languages (Hebrew/Arabic and Romance languages) developed (seemingly independently) _-a_ as a feminine marker.


I do know that it was originally "t", but not because I'm a native speaker, rather because I study linguistics. But as you said, in both Hebrew and Arabic it turned into "-a" seemingly independently. Pretty sure Aramaic doesn't have it at all. I don't know much about the southern Semitic languages.



> @tFigterPilot: Are you aware that many linguists think that the PIE feminine has developed out of a collective inanimate form? I.e. the use of the _-a_ suffix as neuter plural and as feminine singular marker is probably not by accident and the neuter plural meaning is the original one.


My knowledge of Indo European languages is very limited tbh.


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## arielipi

Aramaic has -a suffix for hell sure(at least jewish one), maya,haga leyisrael - though its actually for male, ata tura ve shata lemaya dkava lenura dehika lekalba de nashakh keshunra deachla legadya dizabin aba bitrey zuzey had gadya had gadya.
You could expand your question to that: why most languages have the sound of /m/ in the word mom?
Just think about it - babies use it because its the easiest one, so it became mom, ima, mamme, etc etc.
so, -a is the easiest vowel of them all


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## tFighterPilot

arielipi said:


> Aramaic has -a suffix for hell sure(at least jewish one), maya,haga leyisrael - though its actually for male, ata tura ve shata lemaya dkava lenura dehika lekalba de nashakh keshunra deachla legadya dizabin aba bitrey zuzey had gadya had gadya.


Of course, that's the definite suffix. It indicates neither gender nor quantity.


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> I do know that it was originally "t", but not because I'm a native speaker, rather because I study linguistics.


I thought because the <t> is revived in status constructus and in suffixed forms, it was still transparent to modern speakers that <t> is the "true" feminine suffix.


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> I thought because the <t> is revived in status constructus and in suffixed forms, it was still transparent to modern speakers that <t> is the "true" feminine suffix.


I think most speakers suppose it's the other way around, that "-a" is the original form and that "-t" is an allomorph.


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> I think most speakers suppose it's the other way around, that "-a" is the original form and that "-t" is an allomorph.


I see.


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## francisgranada

Interestingly, the -a appears in the IE languages also in masculine animated nouns: sluga, scriba, etc...


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## Konanen

arielipi said:


> Aramaic has -a suffix for hell sure(at least jewish one), maya,haga leyisrael - though its actually for male, ata tura ve shata lemaya dkava lenura dehika lekalba de nashakh keshunra deachla legadya dizabin aba bitrey zuzey had gadya had gadya.
> You could expand your question to that: why most languages have the sound of /m/ in the word mom?
> Just think about it - babies use it because its the easiest one, so it became mom, ima, mamme, etc etc.
> so, -a is the easiest vowel of them all



I have done some researches about that, also because I had to do a presentation about first language acquisition of children.
I came to the humble conclusion, that one of the first sounds babies experiment with, are bilabials, and thus parents conclude their children naming them with "mamamama" or "papapapap" or "bababababa".
Ex.:
Mama(D, HR, ...)/Mamma(IT)/Maman(FR)/Mom(EN) - mother
baba (TR)/Papa(D)/... - father
baba/baka (HR) - grandmother
dad (EN)

BUT: _mama_ in Turkish means baby food.

I ask myself, why *feminina* and not masculina or neutra?
Why formed the "simplest" vowel, enunciated by merely opening the mouth (a), presumably *overall *(coexisting with some different forms and also forming other declensions) a feminine marker, whereas masculina had a complete diverse and unpredictable development?


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## francisgranada

I don't think that the IE feminines would be much more "predictable" than the masculines. Nouns like mater, soror, domus, virgo, turris, aetas ... are feminines and belong to various declensions. The same is valid for the Slavic and other IE languages.


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## arielipi

Excuse me tfp, but the -a suffix is actually for [single] male.


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## tFighterPilot

arielipi said:


> Excuse me tfp, but the -a suffix is actually for [single] male.


uh, the word for city, מדינתא (pronounced in Syriac mditta) is feminine.


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## rayloom

tFighterPilot said:


> [...] in both Hebrew and Arabic it turned into "-a" seemingly independently. Pretty sure Aramaic doesn't have it at all.



The common view is a parallel development or areal diffusion phenomenon (as suggested by Huehnergard, see p267 & p166 & ) in Central Semitic, so technically not independently. 
But even this is arguable, since it's based on the absence of this feature in Ugaritic (a dead language, unvocalized) and OSA (another dead language, unvocalized and not commonly considered a Central Semitic language). 
The spelling of a -t in all positions in Ugaritic, does that really tell us that the -t was always pronounced in all positions. Especially given the fact that Ugaritic was an inflected language, which means regarding the feminine singular, the -t would have been pronounced always in mid-speech like in Classical Arabic, unless the word occurs in the end of the sentence (well a feature of Classical Arabic, unknown situation for Ugaritic).

If you take Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew (which are the only surviving languages of Central Semitic), this is the situation for the feminine singular:
- Classical Arabic pausal forms (same for Colloquial Arabic):
Indefinite state: CCC-a
Construct state: CCC-at
Definite state: al-CCC-a

Aramaic (see here):
Indefinite state: CCC-a
Construct state: CCC-at
Definite state: CCC-ta (or CCC-to in Neo-Aramaic Suryoyo)

Hebrew
Indefinite state: CCC-a
 Construct state: CCC-at
 Definite state: ha-CCC-a

So I don't see why it can't be a feature of Proto-Central-Semitic!


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## fdb

There are three problems with this:


the concept “Central Semitic” is far from being universally recognised.
There is a difference between long /ā/ as in the Aramaic fem. sing. abs. and in Hebrew, and short /a/ as in Arabic fem. sing. pausal.
If you really want to reconstruct a proto-language you have to take the oldest form of each daughter language as your point of departure, in the case of Arabic the context form –atun (like Akkadian –atum) and not the pausal –a(h).


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## fdb

berndf said:


> Are you aware that many linguists think that the PIE feminine has developed out of a collective inanimate form? I.e. the use of the _-a_ suffix as neuter plural and as feminine singular marker is probably not by accident and the neuter plural meaning is the original one.



And while we are on the subject of vowel length: the IE ending for neut. pl. nom./acc. is short /a/, while the fem. sing. nom. of many (of course not all) words is /ā/, or rather the stem ending /-ā-/ plus the case ending zero. But besides: what is actually the logical connection between "collective inanimate" and feminine?


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## berndf

fdb said:


> And while we are on the subject of vowel length: the IE ending for neut. pl. nom./acc. is short /a/, while the fem. sing. nom. of many (of course not all) words is /ā/, or rather the stem ending /-ā-/ plus the case ending zero.


He are talking about different development stages here. The lengthening of the feminine suffix probably resulted from the lost -h2 which did not happen when the neuter plural developed; pre-PIE inanimate probably didn't have dual and plural forms but only distinguished individual and collective, both with singular verb forms. The use of singular verb forms with neuter plural in Greek is assumed to be a reflex of this stage.


fdb said:


> But besides: what is actually the logical connection between "collective inanimate" and feminine?


Many nouns relating to females were probably inanimate which may have caused the re-interpretation. But this is indeed something this theory can't explain very well. The explanation sounds a bit ad-hoc. Here is a summary of the theory.


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## rayloom

fdb said:


> There are three problems with this:
> 
> 
> the concept “Central Semitic” is far from being universally recognised.
> There is a difference between long /ā/ as in the Aramaic fem. sing. abs. and in Hebrew, and short /a/ as in Arabic fem. sing. pausal.
> If you really want to reconstruct a proto-language you have to take the oldest form of each daughter language as your point of departure, in the case of Arabic the context form –atun (like Akkadian –atum) and not the pausal –a(h).



2. There might be a difference in the quality or length of the (same) vowel, but they do lose the feminine -t marker.
3. Not to construct, but at least not to rule out a genetic inheritance of this phenomenon.
Also as far as Arabic is concerned, the pausal form -a(h) is as old as the "context" or sandhi form (-atun/-atan/-atin), both features of Classical Arabic.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> If you really want to reconstruct a proto-language...


If you read the question carefully you will find that this is not the purpose here. The question was if there is a "natural tendency" towards _-a_ as a feminine marker. If so, it can develop at any stage of a language.


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## Ironicus

tFighterPilot said:


> uh, the word for city, מדינתא (pronounced in Syriac mditta) is feminine.


True, by virtue of the tav, and the following alap (since we're speaking Aramaic) makes it definite, so it's not merely _city_, it's _the city._


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## tFighterPilot

Ironicus said:


> True, by virtue of the tav, and the following alap (since we're speaking Aramaic) makes it definite, so it's not merely _city_, it's _the city._


Not in modern Aramaic (Syriac), though. There you always add the א in the end regardless of whether it's "a city" or "the city".


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## Ironicus

Well, there's only one literate Aramaic speaker in my  neighborhood, tFighter, so I'll take your word for it until I can consult with him....


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## fdb

berndf said:


> If you read the question carefully you will find that this is not the purpose here. The question was if there is a "natural tendency" towards _-a_ as a feminine marker. If so, it can develop at any stage of a language.


I was replying to rayloom: "So I don't see why it can't be a feature of Proto-Central-Semitic!"​​


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## berndf

fdb said:


> I was replying to rayloom: "So I don't see why it can't be a feature of Proto-Central-Semitic!"


I see.


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## Abu Rashid

tFighterPilot said:


> I do know that it was originally "t", but not because I'm a native speaker, rather because I study linguistics. But as you said, in both Hebrew and Arabic it turned into "-a" seemingly independently. Pretty sure Aramaic doesn't have it at all. I don't know much about the southern Semitic languages..



I don't know about the Aramaic & Hebrew usages, but my understanding of the Arabic usage is that the -t is merely softened in pausal form, it does not really become -a, in effect only half the sound is made, which sounds similar to -a(h).


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## Abu Rashid

fdb said:


> ..But besides: what is actually the logical connection between "collective inanimate" and feminine?



Most societies considered females to be part and parcel of the belongings of men (chattel) until not that long ago, so it would've made sense to lump them grammatically with all the other [virtually] inanimate possessions they had, no?


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## francisgranada

Abu Rashid said:


> Most societies considered females to be part and parcel of the belongings of men (chattel) until not that long ago, so it would've made sense to lump them grammatically with all the other [virtually] inanimate possessions they had, no?


I don't think so. The feminine and masculine declension in the IE languages is quite similar, the paradigm depends rather on the stem and not on the gender (various stems, including in -a, do exist both in masc. and. fem.). The neuter nouns, instead, behave differently in the sense, that the accusative has the same form as the nominative (both in sg. and pl.).

P.S. See also #16 and #18


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## fdb

It is a delusion (held mainly by monolingual English speakers) to think that there is an inherent connection between (grammatical) gender and (biological) sex. In the classic Indo-European and Semitic languages the gender of nouns designating animate beings is (normally) governed by their sex, but the nouns designating inanimate beings are distributed without any obvious logic between the three (in Semitic: two) genders. French speakers (for example) do not really believe that their foot (le pied) is male and their hand (la main) is female. It is purely a question of grammar.


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## berndf

francisgranada said:


> I don't think so. The feminine and masculine declension in the IE languages is quite similar, the paradigm depends rather on the stem and not on the gender (various stems, including in -a, do exist both in masc. and. fem.). The neuter nouns, instead, behave differently in the sense, that the accusative has the same form as the nominative (both in sg. and pl.).


You are again mixing up development stages. In this theory we are speaking about a postulated state before the PIE case system developed and the animate agent marker -s and the animate patient marker -m out of which the nominative -s and the accusative -m developed was anything there was in terms of a case system. Inanimate nouns weren't case marked as they didn't appear as agents, they could only be patients of active and subject of stative verbs (Pre-PIE at this development stage is postulated to have been an active-stative language). Please read the text linked to in #24.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> It is a delusion (held mainly by monolingual English speakers) to think that there is an inherent connection between (grammatical) gender and (biological) sex. In the classic Indo-European and Semitic languages the gender of nouns designating animate beings is (normally) governed by their sex, but the nouns designating inanimate beings are distributed without any obvious logic between the three (in Semitic: two) genders. French speakers (for example) do not really believe that their foot (le pied) is male and their hand (la main) is female. It is purely a question of grammar.


You are absolutely right, but I don't think anybody here fell into that trap. There is still an interaction between gender and sex which led to the interpretation of the three genders as male, female and neuter.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> .... Inanimate nouns weren't case marked as they didn't appear as agents ....



So the poor proto-Indo-Europeans could not say "The stone crushed him" ?


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Most societies considered females to be part and parcel of the belongings of men (chattel) until not that long ago, so it would've made sense to lump them grammatically with all the other [virtually] inanimate possessions they had, no?


I largely agree with you. There is one thing, one has to be careful about. Like gender should not be confused with sex, animate/inanimate should also not take as purely biological. _Animate_ means that a noun can occur as an agent of a transitive verb.


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## fdb

I think this is a totally arbitrary definition of the word “animate”. Anyway, the article to which you have supplied the link says explicitly: “only living things can act upon other things, so only animate nouns could take the _*-s_.” The same link also says that Hittite “had only masculine and neuter genders”. This is wrong. Hittite did not have any “genders”, but only a distinction between animate (also called “common”) and inanimate nouns (like Sumerian, Tamil, Elamite and lots of other languages).


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## berndf

The arbitrariness lies mainly in the choice of labels (masculine, animate, living thing). In an animistic society as the pre-PIE with some degree of likelihood was as many ethnologists would argue the animate-inanimate distinction would be meaningless anyhow. Needless to say that all this is very speculative. The main reason why I build up this case here is to show there are other ways to approach all this than through the glasses of our modern weltbild.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> _Animate_ means that a noun can occur as an agent of a transitive verb.



I think we effectively meant the same thing there. My point was women were not even considered agents within society itself, they were things acted upon, likewise [virtually] inanimate property had no agency with which to act either, they were acted upon, and therefore were virtually inanimate.


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## Ironicus

Abu Rashid said:


> .... My point was women were not even considered agents within society itself, they were things acted upon, likewise [virtually] inanimate property had no agency with which to act either, they were acted upon, and therefore were virtually inanimate.



Do you have a source for this extraordinary statement? There is no trace in either the Romance or the Semitic family of grammatical restrictions on the capability of females.


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## fdb

Ironicus said:


> Do you have a source for this extraordinary statement? There is no trace in either the Romance or the Semitic family of grammatical restrictions on the capability of females.



Indeed, there is no source for this, it is pure speculation. As I mentioned already, there are lots of real languages which have the semantic catagories "animate" vs "inanimate", and, in all of these, nouns denoting female beings belong to the animate group. This is the case in Sumerian and Elamite, two of the three oldest attested languages in the world.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> Indeed, there is no source for this, it is pure speculation. As I mentioned already, there are lots of real languages which have the semantic catagories "animate" vs "inanimate", and, in all of these, nouns denoting female beings belong to the animate group. This is the case in Sumerian and Elamite, two of the three oldest attested languages in the world.


No. Some grammarians call the Sumerian genders "animate/inanimate".  But these are purely labels. But only because you read these labels in modern texts books it does not mean that Sumerian genders had this semantic. Less misleading labels for the Sumerian genders could be individual vs. collective. But also this interpretation remains ultimately speculative.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> You are again mixing up development stages ...


Sorry, but don’t understand your reaction … Aren't we speaking about the -a suffix in _existing _languages? Where from could we arrive to whatever conclusion/opinion if not analyzing development stages? 

As reaction to the Abu Rashid's post, I only wanted to say that the IE declension system does not support/suggest the idea that women “belonged” to men ("they were their property") and therefore these nouns were “treated” as inanimate objects (ending in -a, as the plural of the later neutra or collective nouns). To the contrary, “women” and “men” present similar (or equal) paradigmata suggesting that they “philosofically” belonged to the same cathegory (animated human beengs and not inanimated objects) probably even before the development of the proper declension. But this is only my opinion …

An other question is the origin of the relatively diffused feminine –a suffix in the IE languages ...


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## berndf

francisgranada said:


> As reaction to the Abu Rashid's post, I only wanted to say that the IE declension system does not support/suggest the idea that women “belonged” to men ("they were their property") and therefore these nouns were “treated” as inanimate objects (ending in -a, as the plural of the later neutra or collective nouns).


Of course not, because the animate/inanimate distinction belonged to a different development stage (if this theory is true). AR contemplated in how the IE feminine could have developed out of an earlier inanimate collective.


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## Angelo di fuoco

merquiades said:


> One thing I've noticed in Russian (it may be present in other slavic languages too) is the masculine genitive and accusative singular have the ending -a.  I found it interesting coming from a Romance language background where for example  Robert / Roberta reveal gender differences.  In Russian  "of/ from Robert" and "I see Robert" become "Roberta".


Yes, but there's a difference between Ро́берта (masculine singular Genitive and Accusative) and Робе́рта (feminine singular Nominative). Stress usually isn't marked in Russian except in dictionaries and when the context doesn't make it clear.


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## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Yes, but there's a difference between Ро́берта (masculine singular Genitive and Accusative) and Робе́рта (feminine singular Nominative). Stress usually isn't marked in Russian except in dictionaries and when the context doesn't make it clear.



Are you meaning to say that the stress of masculine accusative-genitive nouns in -a consistently switches stress to the first syllable/ stem?  Or is it just the case with Robert(a)


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## tFighterPilot

merquiades said:


> Are you meaning to say that the stress of masculine accusative-genitive nouns in -a consistently switches stress to the first syllable/ stem?  Or is it just the case with Robert(a)


I think it's pretty clear that this suffix simply leaves the stress of the word in the same place (in this case the original word is Ро́берт), while the feminine version of the name pushes the stress forward.


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