# Why feminine nouns are always ending with a?



## Wen24

Hi~
Does anyone know why feminine nouns are always ending with vowel a in Polish?


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## Mori.cze

1) not always (e.g. radość does not)
2) to fit well into the declension system


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## entangledbank

There are a small number of other feminines that don't: _noc_ "night", _rzecz_ "thing", _twarz_ "face", _łódź_ "boat", as well as most ending in _-ość_. I don't know why they're exceptions. Basically, the reason feminines end in _-a_ is that they did in the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language. Another descendant of this was Latin, and _-a_ was the most common feminine ending in Latin, so it continues to be in Spanish and Italian also, as it is in Slavonic languages such as Polish, Russian, and Czech. In some Indo-European branches it has disappeared. In others it has changed: the Lithuanian and Latvian feminine ending is some kind of _-e_, and it was an _e-_like sound in Ancient Greek, and is now _-i_ in Modern Greek. We can even guess as to why they had that ending in Proto-Indo-European.


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## Ben Jamin

Wen24 said:


> Hi~
> Does anyone know why feminine nouns are always ending with vowel a in Polish?


Your supposition is not correct. It is, however true that MOST of feminine nouns end in -a.
Feminine nouns can also end in:
-ć (mać, brać (meaning a band of brothers), zamieć, płoć)
-ść (maść, cześć, część, kiść, kość, czeluść), but "gość" is masculine.
-ź (maź, gałąź, więź)
-dź (kadź, żołądź, śniedź, piędź)
-cz (rzecz), but "mecz" is masculine
-ż (pawęż)
-sz (wesz, mysz).

Why is the 'a' ending so dominating? This is a common feature with most of the Slavic languages and Latin.
Many Indoeuropean languages alternate between "-e" and "-a" ending (Baltic, Germanic, Greek).
You can read more about the subject for example here: Gender category in Indo-European: an article by Cyril Babaev
Sorry, this article has been corrupted, with a major part of it converted to the Greek alphabet. 
Try this one Gender category in Indo-European: an article by Cyril Babaev


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## Wen24

Thank you for every comment.
I learned some feminine nouns of ending without vowel a from your comments. And I saw different opinion.That's really useful.

This topic is still open, if you have different opinion, welcome to share it here.


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## jasio

Ben Jamin said:


> Your supposition is not correct. It is, however true that MOST of feminine nouns end in -a.


To this very comprehensive list I would only add that not all nouns ending in "-a" in Nominative case are feminine: the words like Kuba (as a diminutive of the male name Jakub; Kuba as Cuba country name is feminine), Bonawentura (another name), atleta (athlete), poeta (poet), and some others are all masculine. There is a catch though: they are inflected as if they were feminine, using the same inflection schemes, but they require masculine pronouns, adjectives, past tense suffixes, etc.


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## NotNow

Why are we not mentioning the strangest exception: *mężczyzna?  *


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## Ben Jamin

NotNow said:


> Why are we not mentioning the strangest exception: *mężczyzna?  *


This is actually not an exception, as there are many masculine nouns that with feminine declension pattern:
zdrajca, radca, uchodźca, idiota, specjalista, rowerzysta, sierota (can both masc. and fem), and hundreds of others.
These nouns are always paired with adjectives in masculine form.
Actually it is more correct to use the term "nouns with masculine and feminine declension pattern" than "masculine and feminine nouns".


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## Karton Realista

Ben Jamin said:


> Feminine nouns can also end in:


A little addendum:
-l, like przerębel, although many words ending on -l are not feminine (żagiel).


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## Ben Jamin

Karton Realista said:


> A little addendum:
> -l, like przerębel, although many words ending on -l are not feminine (żagiel).


Many people (maybe most) treat _przerębel _as a masculine noun (Wikisłownik quotes it as only masculine). I think that the feminine declension of this noun is rapidly decreasing.
But we have _kipiel_, _kąpiel_, and _topiel _(strangely enough all related to water) which are still feminine.
Totally, there are rather few feminine nouns ending in -el.
There are even fewer ending with -c. I can recall only _noc _and _moc_.


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