# Declension of the noun будущеe



## Pyotr

Hello gifted linguists!
I'm a beginner struggling with Russian, and I was confused by the title of the old TV series Гостья из будещого.
I know that из takes the genitive case, but it appears that the noun будущее is declining like an adjective (because it has the ого ending). Apparently the nouns for past and present do this as well. Does будущее behave like an adjective in all its cases? If so, any idea why? Are there any other nouns that a beginner should know about which masquerade as adjectives in this fashion?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks


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## Maroseika

Hello Pyotr and welcome to the Russian Forum.

Correct title of the movie is "Гостья из будущего".
The noun будущее is really declined as an adjective. This is so called substantivized adjective - adjective used in the role of the noun. Many adjectives can be used like that, it depends on the context.


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## learnerr

Pyotr said:


> Are there any other nouns that a beginner should know about which masquerade as adjectives in this fashion?


They are not disguised, actually: they have their distinctive adjectival endings in every form, e.g. "караульный".
[By the way, surprised by your description of "Гостья из будущего" as TV series. It is actually a single movie, split in five parts for convenience of publication]


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## ahvalj

Pyotr said:


> it appears that the noun будущее is declining like an adjective (because it has the ого ending). Apparently the nouns for past and present do this as well. Does будущее behave like an adjective in all its cases? If so, any idea why?


Because these are calques of the Greek and Latin words. Cp. «praeteritum», «praesens» and «futūrum», all being neuter singular participles of their respective tenses.


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## palomnik

Pyotr said:


> Hello gifted linguists!
> Apparently the nouns for past and present do this as well. Does будущее behave like an adjective in all its cases? If so, any idea why? Are there any other nouns that a beginner should know about which masquerade as adjectives in this fashion?



I think that this is presumed to be an abbreviation of будущее время, which would also explain why it is in the neuter. 

And I think that it's the other way around - these are adjectives masquerading as nouns!

There are a large number of such terms, and theoretically I suppose any adjective can be used that way, although obviously not all of them are. A few of the commoner ones:

настоящее and прошлое for "present" and "past", as you indicate.
столовая: a cafeteria
выходной: day off
ванная, уборная, гостиная: bathroom, toilet, living room
дежурный/ая: person on duty
военный: a military man
местный: a local guy
рабочий: a worker, a laborer
служащий: an office worker

In short, there are a lot of them, so just accept them as they come!


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## willem81

*Palomnik*, you are quite right with your observation. The gender of such nouns as _ванная_ is defined by the omitted noun _комната_, i.e. originally it had to be _ванная комната_, but for the sake of brevity it gradually shortened to just _ванная_. The same is with _будущее (время_), however one still can use them in its complete form _будущее время_, which won't be a mistake.


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## learnerr

Not always the actual noun word behind such thing is well defined. Sometimes it is ambiguous (like "караульная" may be "будка", "комната" or yet something else), sometimes it does not exist (there is no suitable noun for "дежурная", and even if people imagine some noun of the kind of "работница", no single noun gets chosen in the mind). For some other noun-adjectives, like "премиальные", the noun behind is quite unambiguous (it is "деньги"), but "премиальные деньги" may just not sound straight. Words like "местный", "рабочий", or "военная" also lack any actual noun to accompany ("местный" may be "человек", "житель", or "шалопай", for example). With all that, be the noun word actual or imagined, one thing is true: that noun defines the gender and the number in which the adjective gets frozen as a noun.


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## willem81

learnerr said:


> Let's also add the names for the two similar parts of speech, namely "существительное" and "прилагательное" (both are _names_, "имена").



For this mentioned couple of nouns, the word order is also frozen in their complete form. It must be имя существительное, but never - существительное имя.


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## learnerr

willem81 said:


> For this mentioned couple of nouns, the word order is also frozen in their complete form. It must be имя существительное, but never - существительное имя.


 Why not? The first word order is the one that is used most often nowadays, but this does not mean the opposite word order is impossible.


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## willem81

learnerr said:


> Why not? The first word order is the one that is used most often nowadays, but this does not mean the opposite word order is impossible.



OK, the examples from classical literature are convincing enough. The interesting thing happens when you add an adjective to имя существительное like _'нарицательное имя существительное', _then the order in 'имя существительное' is frozen I think_.
_


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## ahvalj

You all are answering the wrong question. The question was not why they agree to their respective genders, but why these terms were created as adjectives. Speaking of the words «прошлое», «настоящее» and «будущее», it was not impossible to coin substantives for them some 1000 years ago, but the reason why all of them (including also their synonyms «прошедшее» and «грядущее») are participles lies in the fact that they are calques, so the question should be readdressed back to the Greek grammarians. By the way, in English they are historically (Latin) participles as well (Early Romance «passatu», «presente» and «futuru»).


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> the reason why all of them (including also their synonyms «прошедшее» and «грядущее») are participles lies in the fact that they are calques



Why couldn't it be just a contraction of будущее время? So it can be a mere coincidence that in Latin it aslo was adjective.


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## palomnik

Actually, I think that ahvalj is on to something, at least in regard to nouns formed from participles. They are calques from either Greek or Latin (while Greek is the more likely suspect, I don't think the possibility of a conscious borrowing from Latin is out of the question).

Of course, not all nouns formed from adjectives are originally participles. And I suspect we've taken this far beyond what Pyotr asked about!


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> Why couldn't it be just a contraction of будущее время? So it can be a mere coincidence that in Latin it aslo was adjective.


Well, I could explain why, but let's simply check the dictionaries:
Old Russian — https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJaWd4ZlB4V2pvU2M/edit?usp=sharing — p. 347
Old Church Slavonic —  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJWEdNZGYtSTRDcGM/edit?usp=sharing — p. 107
For both languages, dictionaries provide examples of the participle alone, without «время/врҍмѧ».


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> For both languages, dictionaries provide examples of the participle alone, without «время/врҍмѧ».



Old Russian dictionary provides it with the word время exactly in the grammatical sense (look будущее II, in the very end - example dated 1535).
As for the Old Slavonic dictionary (there is no word "Church" in its title), if you think it is a Latin calque, I cannot argue, although don't see any reason for that. By the way, both будущее and грядущее in this sense were used in Old Slavonic in Plural form, not like in Latin.


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> Old Russian dictionary provides it with the word время exactly in the grammatical sense (look будущее II, in the very end - example dated 1535).
> As for the Old Slavonic dictionary (there is no word "Church" in its title), if you think it is a Latin calque, I cannot argue, although don't see any reason for that. By the way, both будущее and грядущее in this sense were used in Old Slavonic in Plural form, not like in Latin.



The original question concerned this word in another context:


Pyotr said:


> I'm a beginner struggling with Russian, and I was confused by the title of the old TV series Гостья из будещого.


So, we are discussing not the grammatical term, where indeed the word "tense" is implied (and so your example on the page 348), but the abstract term for the "future" in general, and this is where the dictionaries give it as a plain participle since the very first records. Yes, it may have figured in plural, which contradicts the Latin usage and addresses us to the Greek: «το μέλλον» (a substantivized neuter present active participle from «μέλλω» 'to intend, to be due'), but also «τα μέλλοντα» (the plural of the same participle) — cp. https://www.google.ru/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=IOqOUr7VHqGZ4gS20oCQAg 

Let's look at the other Slavic languages for this word: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Будущее
Bulgarian has «бъдеще» — either the continuation of the Old Church Slavonic form, or rather a bulgarized Russian borrowing of the 19th century.
Ukrainian has «майбутнє» — its own invention, and, by the way, neuter, though the grammatical tense will be masculine — «майбутній час» (https://www.google.ru/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=Z-yOUv63PNDV4QSCg4DYDg).
Belarusian has «будучыня» — a substantive.
Macedonian has a word «иднина» — rather obscure to me, but I guess derived from the correspondence of the Russian «идти». Also a substantive, by the way.
Polish has a substantive «przyszłość» — derived from the participle related to the Russian «пришлый», but substantivized.
The other languages (Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Czech) all have phonetic correspondences of the Russian substantive «будущность» — again, derived from the participle, but substantivized.

From this set it appears that there was no common Slavic word for the future (which is confirmed by the etymological dictionaries) — or, at least, it did not exist outside the sphere of pagan philosophy — exterminated by the Christian church and thus unknown to the christians who created abstract terms anew. I suppose Cyril and Methodius just translated the Greek originals, converting «το μέλλον» into «бѫдѫщеѥ» and «τα μέλλοντα» into «бѫдѫщаꙖ» (by the way, why have those idiots from the Unicode committee omitted the letters for Ꙗ?). As most other early Slavic abstract terms it has preserved in Russian but either did not reach the other Slavic languages or was replaced there with time. But, except for Ukrainian, all the other languages were dissatisfied with the participle and introduced plain substantives.


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## Pyotr

A fascinating discussion! Thank you all for your responses; I have learned a lot - much more, in fact, than the answer to my original question!
Thanks for adding value.


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