# Undeclinable words have genders!



## PERSEE

Hello everyone,

Reading (or better said, trying to read) an article in Огонек, I stumble upon "каждое кафе", and so I realize this undeclinable word has a gender. I confess I had never really gone very far into this question of undeclinables. For me, it was always a little sad to see that a foreign word could not be declined, and that was it. I never wondered what would happen if one had to use the word with an adjective or a pronoun. So I browsed through Викисловарь in order to check a few undeclinables, and I saw that even такси, with its impossible ending, is neuter. Are all undeclinables neuter? Is this a rule?

By the way, some foreign words don't always have impossible endings. What would you make of Pablo Neruda, for instance? Theoretically, Pablo could be considered a neuter, and Neruda a feminine!


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## Saluton

Well, yes, it is a rule, but not without exceptions, like any rule... Кофе is still considered a masculine noun although many people use it as a neuter one. Also, some undeclinable nouns tend to have the same gender as their generic term: for example, undeclinable names of languages (эсперанто, чероки, винту) are masculine because язык is masculine. Names of peoples are plural, but when applied to particular men from these peoples, they will become masculine: высокий банту, молодой чероки. I'm not sure if the same can be applied to women, though (высокая банту , рыжеволосая коми ).

Неруда is indeed declined like a feminine noun: Неруды, Неруде, Неруду, Нерудой, о Неруде, and so are most other names ending with an unstressed -а (non-Russian names ending with a stressed -а, like Дюма, are undeclinable).


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## LilianaB

Why do certain people decline certain words such as _podium_, whereas others do not? If declined the word is in a feminine gender.


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## Saluton

LilianaB said:


> Why certain people decline certain words such as _podium_, whereas others do not? If declined the word is in a feminine gender.


 Подиум is an ordinary masculine noun and is always declined.


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## ahvalj

The rule is that any noun that has singular forms must be classified into one of three genders. In contrast, no genders exist in the plural-only nouns since there is no way to determine it (even when «обоих» is used with such words, we cannot distinguish between masculine and neuter).


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Why certain people decline certain words such as _podium_, whereas others do not? If declined the word is in a feminine gender.


«Подиум» is masculine: I have never met any other variant. All the non-personal nouns ending with a consonant are referred to the masculine gender.


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## ahvalj

PERSEE said:


> By the way, some foreign words don't always have impossible endings. What would you make of Pablo Neruda, for instance? Theoretically, Pablo could be considered a neuter, and Neruda a feminine!


Пабло Неруда is masculine, of course: «убитый Пабло Неруда». I think you confuse the declension type with the gender: masculine nouns of the 1st declension («юноша, Паша») do not become feminine, they just belong to the declension where the overwhelming majority of nouns are feminine, but their agreement is like in any other masculine noun.


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## LilianaB

Why do some people say на подиум whereas others say на подиумe?


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## ahvalj

Saluton said:


> (non-Russian names ending with a stressed -а, like Дюма, are undeclinable).


Not necessarily, it depends on the tradition: when they are borrowed from oriental languages, they do decline (Ходжа, Насралла); French borrowings like Дюма, Доза were made by people who were not so familiar with their native language, that's why they preferred to leave them undeclined.


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## Saluton

LilianaB said:


> Why some people say на подиум whereas others say на подиумe?



На подиум means "onto the podium," i.e. is an answer to "where to?", with an accusative noun. На подиуме is an answer to "where?", with a prepositional noun.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Why some people say на подиум whereas others say на подиумe?


«На подиум» is Accusative and means "to where", while «на подиуме» is Locative and means "where".


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## LilianaB

Do you think some people may not decline Latinates just for style?


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## Saluton

Which Latinates do you mean? All the Latinates mentioned here are declinable, except for вето, сальдо, соло and эго.


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## Maroseika

LilianaB said:


> Do you think some people may not decline Latinates just for style?



No. Just for ignorance.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Do you think some people may not decline Latinates just for style?


No, it's just some psychological moment in some heads: these people may leave any name ending on «а» from an unfamiliar language undeclined («с Лаврентием Берия» etc.). More than this, they may leave undeclined an unfamiliar Slavic surname ending with a consonant (I have heard myself how many troubles the name of some Алексей Зубец caused in the heads of people calling to the radio where he had a program). Plainly speaking, it all is just wrong and is caused by the lack of education and feeling of the person's native language, be it a worker or an academician. The most shameful case I have met in this sense was the indeclension of Лаврентий Берия in the text by the famous (but overrated, in my view) linguist Вячеслав Иванов.


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## Syline

PERSEE said:


> Are all undeclinables neuter? Is this a rule?


Only inanimate nouns are neuter, but there are exeptions, of course: кофе (m), пенальти (m), такку (f), and others.    
Masculine gender: names of males (денди, маэстро, портье), names of birds and animals (but if we talk about female animals we use feminine gender) 
Feminine gender: names of females (мисс, фрау, леди).

Цеце is feminine because of муха.   



PERSEE said:


> What would you make of Pablo Neruda, for instance?


All last names ending with an unstressed _*a*_ after consonants are to be declined as nouns of the 1st declension.


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## LilianaB

See in Polish all Latinates, I think, do not decline. They will sound ridiculous if declined. I have noticed some people do not decline them in Russian either , but I know that they have to be decline according to Russian grammar.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> See in Polish all Latinates, I think, do not decline. They will sound ridiculous if declined. I have noticed some people do not decline them in Russian either , but I know that they have to be decline according to Russian grammar.


In Polish, to my knowledge, only Latin borrowings on «-um» are not declined, which from the Slavic perspective sounds idiotic («Prace Muze*um* Ziemi w Warszawie»). It is absolutely irrelevant, whether this «-um» was itself an ending in Latin: all these words have to be adapted to the grammar of the receiving language.


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> The most shameful case I have met in this sense was the indeclension of Лаврентий Берия in the text by the famous (but overrated, in my view) linguist Вячеслав Иванов.



According to Rosental, foreign surnames on -ия are indeclinable with only exception for Georgian ones, which can be as declinable as indeclinable. Declinability of exactly Beria is a new tradition. As far as I known it was indeclinable when he was alive.
As for Зубец, Rosental recommendates to leave such surnames indeclinable to avoid funny combinations (гражданину Гусю).


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> According to Rosental, foreign surnames on -ия are indeclinable with only exception for Georgian ones, which can be as declinable as indeclinable. Declinability of exactly Beria is a new tradition. As far as I known it was indeclinable when he was alive.
> As for Зубец, Rosental recommendates to leave such surnames indeclinable to avoid funny combinations (гражданину Гусю).


OK, then by black list now includes Rosenthal as well. There is nothing in the structure of the Russian grammar that would allow to leave all the discussed nouns indeclinable, and no Rosenthal can legalize the opposite.


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## LilianaB

If borrowings with _um_ endings were declined in Polish they would sound very weird. Maybe this has something to do with the phonetic harmony of the language.


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## PERSEE

ahvalj said:


> Not necessarily, it depends on the tradition: when they are borrowed from oriental languages, they do decline (Ходжа, Насралла); French borrowings like Дюма, Доза were made by people who were not so familiar with their native language, that's why they preferred to leave them undeclined.



It would be silly to decline Дюма as a feminine, because it does not even has a feminine form in French (Dumas is not even a plural, it could be analysed as Du + Mas, which is a masculine word). This is merely a rhetoric question, of course, because names in French have no gender and are not supposed to be used with articles. If you really had to give it a gender, it would be that of the bearer: "Le Dumas des années 1840 n'est plus le même que celui des années 1830." (The Dumas of the 1840s is not the same as that of the 1830s.)

Who is Доза? Albert Dauzat?


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## ahvalj

PERSEE said:


> Who is Доза? Albert Dauzat?


Yes.


PERSEE said:


> It would be silly to decline Дюма as a feminine, because it does not even has a feminine form in French (Dumas is not even a plural, it could be analysed as Du + Mas, which is a masculine word). This is merely a rhetoric question, of course, because names in French have no gender and are not supposed to be used with articles. If you really had to give it a gender, it would be that of the bearer: "Le Dumas des années 1840 n'est plus le même que celui des années 1830." (The Dumas of the 1840s is not the same as that of the 1830s.)


I would like to repeat that there no such thing as the feminine declension in Russian. There are words of the 1st and 3rd declensions, the majority in which constitute the feminine nouns. That's all. There is absolutely no grammatical obstacles in Russian against declining any masculine noun on «-а» following this declension pattern. My name is Алексей, diminutive Алёша, and this latter word follows the 1st declension despite denoting a male. Absolutely the same is the case with Dumas, Dauzat, Mauriat etc. Simply somebody in the 19th century decided that declining the names with the stressed final «а» would make them less perceptible in the oblique cases. That is the only reason and it has nothing to do with the grammar, just some odd decision that unfortunately became a tradition.


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## Syline

PERSEE said:


> It would be silly to decline Дюма as a feminine, because it does not even has a feminine form in French (Dumas is not even a plural, it could be analysed as Du + Mas, which is a masculine word).


Be sure that if the stress in Дюма fell on the first syllable the last name would be declinable (1st declension). The point is that it is *French *(all French names have last-syllable stresses).

PS Feminine gender is just a grammatical category, nothing more.
PPS And yeah, you shouldn't confuse genders with declensions.


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## morzh

PERSEE said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> Reading (or better said, trying to read) an article in Огонек, I stumble upon "каждое кафе", and so I realize this undeclinable word has a gender. I confess I had never really gone very far into this question of undeclinables. For me, it was always a little sad to see that a foreign word could not be declined, and that was it. I never wondered what would happen if one had to use the word with an adjective or a pronoun. So I browsed through Викисловарь in order to check a few undeclinables, and I saw that even такси, with its impossible ending, is neuter. Are all undeclinables neuter? Is this a rule?
> 
> By the way, some foreign words don't always have impossible endings. What would you make of Pablo Neruda, for instance? Theoretically, Pablo could be considered a neuter, and Neruda a feminine!



Ahem.....EVERY noun has a gender. Didn't they tell it to you?
EVERY noun.

It does not matter if it is an undeclinable.

Also, in Pablo Neruda you confused declension (for Neruda - 1st declention) with gender. Yes, most nouns in the 1st are feminines, but the only criteria for the word to be in the 1st is to end with "а/я". And the gender may be masculine as well (all non-feminines in the 1st stand for a live person).


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> OK, then by black list now includes Rosenthal as well. There is nothing in the structure of the Russian grammar that would allow to leave all the discussed nouns indeclinable, and no Rosenthal can legalize the opposite.



Who talks about grammar? This is just a tradition, that he fixed, and you are free to follow it or not to follow.
And I think you would take it differently if your surname were Гусь. At least most part of such people do.
I checked with a person lived that time - Берия was indeclinable at least in offical sources, as well as other Georgian surnames. Just a tradition, nothing pers... grammatical.


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## PERSEE

I would like to repeat that there no such thing as the feminine declension in Russian. There are words of the 1st and 3rd declensions, the majority in which constitute the feminine nouns. That's all.[/QUOTE]

This is a bit confusing to me, but quite interesting. So my Russian grammar (N. Stepanoff-Kontchalovski) oversimplifies the matter when it says: "La première déclinaison comprend les noms féminins en a-я." (The first declension includes the feminine names ending with a-я). There's not even a hint about some masculine names belonging to this declension.

To give you my impressions as a learner, when Саша or Aлёша is nominative, I feel it is more or less masculine. But once it is declined, I get a feeling it becomes feminine, because it enters what I feel is a feminine declension. In French, it would be like putting a feminine article before it: la Sacha, l'Aliocha.

In time, I had become so much used to Саша being a boy, that when I first met with a female one, namely in the movie Москва слезам не верит, it sounded awkward to me, as though the girl had a masculine name! (Now, I saw the film so many times that I'm quite used to it.)

I guess that for a Russian native,  Aлёша or обжора are felt like absolutely masculine.

So, you're telling me I should get into my head that a word ending with an -a can be either feminine or masculine.


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## Syline

PERSEE said:


> There's not even a hint about some masculine names belonging to this declension.


Папа (Dad), дядя (uncle), дедушка (grandpa) are masculine nouns of the first declension. And not to mention them... well, that's very strange. Considering that these are not the rarest words in the world.

Обжора can be either masculine or feminine:
Он - такой обжора.
Она - такая обжора.


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## morzh

PERSEE said:


> This is a bit confusing to me, but quite interesting. So my Russian grammar (N. Stepanoff-Kontchalovski) oversimplifies the matter when it says: "La première déclinaison comprend les noms féminins en a-я." (The first declension includes the feminine names ending with a-я). There's not even a hint about some masculine names belonging to this declension.
> 
> To give you my impressions as a learner, when Саша or Aлёша is nominative, I feel it is more or less masculine. But once it is declined, I get a feeling it becomes feminine, because it enters what I feel is a feminine declension. In French, it would be like putting a feminine article before it: la Sacha, l'Aliocha.
> 
> In time, I had become so much used to Саша being a boy, that when I first met with a female one, namely in the movie Москва слезам не верит, it sounded awkward to me, as though the girl had a masculine name! (Now, I saw the film so many times that I'm quite used to it.)
> 
> I guess that for a Russian native, Aлёша or обжора are felt like absolutely masculine.
> 
> So, you're telling me I should get into my head that a word ending with an -a can be either feminine or masculine.



If this is what it says then it is "Russian declensions for dummies" type of explanations.

I would like to repeat that there no such thing as the feminine declension in Russian. There are words of the 1st and 3rd declensions, the majority in which constitute the feminine nouns. That's all.



One has to separate declension from gender.

Declension is a superset.

1-st, for instance, simply defined as "all nouns ending with а/я".
2-nd is "all masculines with no ending ор "o/e" ending and neuters".
3-rd is "all feminines without ending".

Now, granted, the vast majority of the nouns in the 1st are feminines, as ALL "а/я" endings for inanimates make for feminine gender. But there are masculines too with this same ending, though there are much less of those, and they ALL mean animate (mostly human) categories (see Syline's example, "обжора" - a human who eats a lot).

But, again - declension and gender are not the same.


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## Nanon

PERSEE said:


> By the way, some foreign words don't always have impossible endings. What would you make of Pablo Neruda, for instance? Theoretically, Pablo could be considered a neuter, and Neruda a feminine!


No, no. Only Матильде (f, not n!) Уррутиа де Неруда is feminine (and, as such, her name with "impossible endings" is not declined) . Have fun.


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> And I think you would take it differently if your surname were Гусь. At least most part of such people do.


My surname is even worse, and still...


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> Who talks about grammar? This is just a tradition, that he fixed, and you are free to follow it or not to follow.
> And I think you would take it differently if your surname were Гусь. At least most part of such people do.
> I checked with a person lived that time - Берия was indeclinable at least in offical sources, as well as other Georgian surnames. Just a tradition, nothing pers... grammatical.


Well, but a person just cannot declare that since tomorrow he stops declining, say, the word «вода» just because he thinks it would be preferable by some reason. The grammar is the way the words get organized in the sentence. Yes, these principles can change with time, but what we are discussing is hopefully not a decline of declension in Russian but a stupid манерничание of some groups of people.


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> Well, but a person just cannot declare that since tomorrow he stops declining, say, the word «вода» just because he thinks it would be preferable by some reason. The grammar is the way the words get organized in the sentence. Yes, these principles can change with time, but what we are discussing is hopefully not a decline of declension in Russian but a stupid манерничание of some groups of people.



If a person can declare how to use commas, why can't he declare how to decline names? All this is just a product of social agreement, not a law of nature.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> If borrowings with _um_ endings were declined in Polish they would sound very weird. Maybe this has something to do with the phonetic harmony of the language.


I think it's entirely psychological. To my knowledge no other Slavic language went as far as Polish with these um-words. The Poles just created additional complexities for themselves (a part of their national character, probably ,-)

By the way, all this situation exists in Lithuanian as well, the only exception is that you have the ė-declension there, so some more feminine words can be declined (though still the masculine nouns remain undeclinable: ateljė, kabarė). On the other hand, you have to add endings to the borrowed nouns ending with consonants, and this irritates, e. g., Poles and Russians living in Lithuania when some Василий Пупкин becomes Vasilijus Pupkinas in his passport... 

An anecdotal evidence. In the end of the eighties, when my interest to languages began, the only possibility for me to hear most of them was listening to the short-wave radio. For Lithuanian, I had only two choices: the dreary Vatican Radio and the somewhat less deathly "Laisvosios Europos" radiją. The latter, being an American station, apparently had some special respect to the English names and surnames and was seeking ways to convey them in the least distorted way. So some of the speakers decided not to decline such names altogether, and especially the news contained phrases like «prezidentas George Bush pareiškė, kad...» or even «pasak George Bush, Jungtinės Amerikos Valstijos bus...».


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## LilianaB

Last names of foreign origin in Lithuanian are usually adjusted to the Lithuanian grammar. So I think they will rarely say, or especially write George Bush, although I am not sure, probably it depends who writes it these days. There was this whole problem that Polish people wanted to have their names spelled the Polish way, and with the Lithuanian endings they could not be declined properly in Polish. May name, thank God, in the form I have it now, cannot be declined in any language. Maybe if they tried hard they could still do it in Lithuanian with some changes.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Last names of foreign origin in Lithuanian are usually adjusted to the Lithuanian grammar. So I think they will rarely say, or especially write George Bush, although I am not sure, probably it depends who writes it these days.


Yes, not now: now the Lithuanian media decline Džordžo Bušo ir Barako Obamos vardus. This was a funny manner of the "Free Europe" radio of those times, I guess.


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## morzh

LilianaB said:


> Last names of foreign origin in Lithuanian are usually adjusted to the Lithuanian grammar. So I think they will rarely say, or especially write George Bush,



Let me guess.....Georgas Bushas? 
А его жена - Laura Bushene?

To be perfectly honest, I never understood compulsory name change in some languages. I think, a person should be able to keep his/her name the way it is.

Czech is the same way - Laura Busheva, probably.


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## ahvalj

morzh said:


> Let me guess.....Georgas Bushas?
> А его жена - Laura Bushene?


Džordžas Bušas ir Lora Buš (http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Walker_Bush). Everything according to the rules '-)


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## ahvalj

morzh said:


> To be perfectly honest, I never understood compulsory name change in some languages. I think, a person should be able to keep his/her name the way it is.
> 
> Czech is the same way - Laura Busheva, probably.


In Lithuanian it is automatic. If you don't add nominative endings, you'll be unable to decline *all* the borrowings ending on consonants. The Latin had the same troubles when an exception was made for the Biblical Jewish names and instead of the regular and declinable *Solomo, *Davidus etc. the Christians decided to use the more sacral indeclinable variants like Solomon and David.


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## LilianaB

Yes, he is Dzordzas Volkeris Busas, but his wife is often referred to as Laura Bush, especially in older articles. Maybe there is not that much about her in the Lithuanian press anymore.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Yes, he is Dzordzas Valkeris Busas, but his wife is often referred to as Laura Bush, especially in older articles. Maybe there is not that much about her in the Lithuanian press anymore.


Lora Buš is in use as well: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q="Lora+Buš"+site:.lt&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8


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## LilianaB

See, there is Barakas Huseinas Obamas, but Michelle Obama is usually Michelle Obama.


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## Nanon

morzh said:


> Czech is the same way - Laura Busheva, probably.



Laura Bushová. Michelle Obamová .


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## bibax

> So, you're telling me I should get into my head that a word ending with an -a can be either feminine or masculine.


As French is a Romance language you probably know that the Latin nouns of the 1st declension (the so called a-stem nouns) can be either feminine or masculine as well. Examples of the a-stem masculine nouns in Latin: poeta, agricola, incola, nauta, homicida, Agrippa, Caligula (however caligula is feminine), Sequana (Seine, masculine in Latin), etc. They are declined exactly the same way like femina, domina, Agrippina, Roma, Gallia.

Btw, Pablo Neruda ("Павел Bорчун") chose for unknown reason a Slavic pen name (meaning _'grumpy man'_ in Czech, a-stem masculine noun), so it is quite natural to decline it the "Slavic" way in the Slavic languages.


> Laura Bushová. Michelle Obamová .


And Monica Lewinská, Naděžda Krupská (not Krupskaja).


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## Explorer41

PERSEE said:


> I guess that for a Russian native,  Aлёша or обжора are felt like absolutely masculine.


Your control guess is absolutely right.


ahvalj said:


> There is nothing in the structure of the Russian grammar that would allow to leave all the discussed nouns indeclinable, and no Rosenthal can legalize the opposite.


It's funny enough. Do you mean, in linguistics all the _laws_ of language are known? People speak the language they have, then there comes a linguist and says: "no, the rules I reconstructed from the language use don't allow you to speak like that!"

Science should be based upon practice. It would be unacceptable, for example, if physicians ignored the fact that the speed of light is the same in every inertial reference frame and continued to develop the old theories, no matter how beautiful they were or weren't. I think, the same applies to linguistics.


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## lesgles

PERSEE said:


> I guess that for a Russian native, Aлёша or обжора are felt like absolutely masculine.
> 
> So, you're telling me I should get into my head that a word ending with an -a can be either feminine or masculine.



The reason this is necessary is that "gender" is normally used to refer to how a word agrees with others in the sentence.

Words like папа, юноша, Саша, Алёша, etc. are the exception to the rule that 1st declension nouns are feminine. If you like, then, you can think of them as declining _like_ feminine nouns. But for all other purposes they are masculine: папа пришёл (not пришла), Илья умный (not умная), Юра болен (not больна), я видел бедного слугу (not бедную слугу)...

I recommend Terence Wade's _Comprehensive Russian Grammar_, which lists many more exceptions.


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## Syline

lesgles said:


> Words like папа, юноша, Саша, Алёша, etc. are the exception to the rule that 1st declension nouns are feminine.


The rule is that the 1st declension nouns are those ending on -а/-я. Thus, masculine and common nouns aren't exceptions.


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## morzh

lesgles said:


> The reason this is necessary is that "gender" is normally used to refer to how a word agrees with others in the sentence.
> 
> Words like папа, юноша, Саша, Алёша, etc. are the exception to the rule that 1st declension nouns are feminine. If you like, then, you can think of them as declining _like_ feminine nouns. But for all other purposes they are masculine: папа пришёл (not пришла), Илья умный (not умная), Юра болен (not больна), я видел бедного слугу (not бедную слугу)...
> 
> I recommend Terence Wade's _Comprehensive Russian Grammar_, which lists many more exceptions.



Oh, man. Have you read what's been said here? I have to repeat third time: there is NO RULE that 1st declension is feminine.
Read the thread, please.


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## Nanon

Lesgles, remember that one of the masculine nouns that belongs to the 1st declension is... мужчина .
That's a good starting point for a list.


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## morzh

Nanon said:


> Lesgles, remember that one of the masculine nouns that belongs to the 1st declension is... мужчина .
> That's a good starting point for a list.



"Мы с тобой одного склонения, ты и я!"


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## lesgles

OK, успокойтесь. I'm sorry I wasn't clear, but I did read the thread, and I agree with you all on the definition of declension. I was instead responding to the OP's statement that Russian speakers "feel" these verbs to be masculine, and I wanted to emphasize the fact that it's more than just a "feeling"; these words are obviously masculine because of how they affect other words in the sentence.

By "rule", I meant a rule of thumb or a pattern, not a hard and fast rule. The fact that we can list the masculine first declension nouns in a few lines means that they are in this sense exceptions to the general pattern that first declension nouns are feminine, a pattern (or rule) which governs thousands of nouns.


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## morzh

lesgles said:


> OK, успокойтесь.



FYI (for general education purposes) "успокойтесь" sounds rude.


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## lesgles

Sorry, no rudeness was intended!


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## morzh

lesgles said:


> Sorry, no rudeness was intended!



I understand, I'm just letting you know how it sounds.
The word is not rude by itself at all, but used in an argument, it becomes a warning such as "hey, chill out!". Often used in spousal falling-outs in the sense of "Enough! You are too loud!".


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## jazyk

> If borrowings with _um_ endings were declined in Polish they would  sound very weird. Maybe this has something to do with the phonetic  harmony of the language.


Um words are declined in Czech and in Slovak like words ending in o: centrum, bez centra, k centru, centrum, centrum!, o centru*, centrem*

O centre in Slovak. Centrom in Slovak.


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## LilianaB

Yes, I think they sound normal in Slovak, but they would sound absolutely stupid in Polish, if declined, I cannot even imagine the forms in fact. Ide do centrumu?


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## PERSEE

lesgles said:


> я видел бедного слугу (not бедную слугу)...



This for me is high acrobatics! I can only dream of a day when I would say this sort of thing without thinking...


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## Maroseika

PERSEE said:


> This for me is high acrobatics! I can only dream of a day when I would say this sort of thing without thinking...



Fortunately, all the masculine nouns of the 1st declension are animated. So it's not higher aerobatics, but just a little trick.


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## morzh

lesgles said:


> , я видел бедного слугу (not бедную слугу)...




Actually, it is interesting word, "слуга" that is.
If one did not know that the female counterpart exists as a separate word ("служанка"), he could theorize "слуга" is a "common gender" (общего рода) noun.
But since the separate female counterpart does exist, it is then a masculine one, 1st declension.

However, with the word "староста" (this one is indeed common gender), which is also 1st declension, one can say both "я видел бедного старосту" and "я видел бедную старосту".

Now, coming back to "слуга", to further complicate the matter, when used in plural form, "слуги", it does sort of become a common gender as it means a group of servants,  "слуга/служанка" together.  One can say "Слуги и служанки" or simply "слуги", and it will mean the same exact thing. But formally it is still a masculine, even in plural. Though, declension-wise, it changes nothing.


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## bibax

> This for me is high acrobatics! I can only dream of a day when I would say this sort of thing without thinking...


Remember your Roman ancestors. They used to say:

Miser*um* Caligul*am* vidi (not miser*am* Caligul*am*).= Я видел бедного Калигулу (not бедную Калигулу).


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## bibax

> However, with the word "староста" (this one is indeed common gender), which is also 1st declension, one can say both "я видел бедного старосту" and "я видел бедную старосту".


In Czech we have starosta (masc.) - starostka (fem.).

Viděl jsem ubohého starostu. Viděl jsem ubohou starostku.

However 'viděl jsem ubohou Starostu' is also possible. In this case Starosta (fem.) is St. Wilgefortis.


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## morzh

Well, I said that to illustrate that "common gender" nouns are probably the best example to show that 1st declension is not about genders.

BTW, the earlier mentioned "обжора" is not really masculine. It is also "common gender", as both a male and female can be "обжора".


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## bibax

In Czech the common gender nouns are very rare. The feminines nearly always have different ending: sluha - služka, posluha - posluhovačka, pianista - pianistka, etc. Probably only the proper names can be of common gender: Míša, Saša, Jarka, ...

Viděl jsem ubohého Míšu. Viděl jsem ubohou Míšu.

Back to the original question. I always wonder why so many words in Russian are indeclinable, for example kino, metro. They can be declined like село, for example станция метрa. Cтанция метро sounds like Station Metro (and not _a station of the metro_).


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## LilianaB

Well, in Polish kino and metro are declinable whereas most nouns ending in um are not declinable, centrum, stadium, muzeum, podium.


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## bibax

Which is quite strange as well, centrum muzeum must be quite incomprehensible. In Czech: centrum muzea vs. muzeum centra.

Idę do centrum muzeum.


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## Maroseika

bibax said:


> Back to the original question. I always wonder why so many words in Russian are indeclinable, for example kino, metro. They can be declined like село, for example станция метрa. Cтанция метро sounds like Station Metro (and not _a station of the metro_).



Just a convention, based on the morphology: -о or -и or whatsoever in such words in the end is not an ending, is not a inflexion. In colloquial semi-literate speech it is quite declinable: в пальте, на метре, из кина, пять сушей (sushi).


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## LilianaB

Yes Bibax, Ide do centrum muzeum is correct. Ide do srodka muzeum, albo ide do centrum zeby pojsc do muzeum.


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## PERSEE

bibax said:


> Cтанция метро sounds like Station Metro (and not _a station of the metro_).



Here, I have a question for those of you who are native Russian speakers: in cтанция метро, do you feel метро as a genitive*? In other words, does it feel _as though_ it was declined?


* I can't find a suitable English translation for the French "complément de nom", literally "noun complement". In French, cтанция метро translates to _station de métro_.


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## Maroseika

PERSEE said:


> Here, I have a question for those of you who are native Russian speakers: in cтанция метро, do you feel метро as a genitive*? In other words, does it feel _as though_ it was declined?



Sure, we feel it (excuse me this presuming 'we'). Otherwise how could we use adjectives? Станция московского метро, в питерском метро, etc.
Cf. На станции "Новогиреево" всегда полно народу. Новогиреево is undeclinable as a name of the station, and I don't think anybody feels it in any case but Nominative.


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## bibax

So why we Slavs decline the nouns? We could simply "feel" the cases. Bulgarian does not decline the nouns however it relies on the prepositions (something like cтанция_та_ *от* метро_то_).


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## Maroseika

It's an interesting question leading us into the depths of the glottogenesis - how people 'feel' the cases, be they marked by use of declensions, prepositions or just the words order (like in Chinese). I also always wondered if the English natives, for example, _feel _any difference in the status of, say, noun "car" in 'by car', 'into the car', "to the car', etc.


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## vianie

jazyk said:


> Um words are declined in Czech and in Slovak like words ending in o


I can add that they loose their ending during inflection as well as the words with _-us_.



LilianaB said:


> Ide do centrumu?


_Idem do centrumu_ is correct in Slovak, if only _centrum_ is a centre of shopping, entertaiment, or likewise. Otherwise, just _idem do centra_.



bibax said:


> In Czech the common gender nouns are very rare.


And in Slovak they practically don't exist. Let me know if I'm wrong.


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## PERSEE

Maroseika said:


> I also always wondered if the English natives, for example, _feel _any difference in the status of, say, noun "car" in 'by car', 'into the car', "to the car', etc.



Judging by what a French native feels about the equivalents (en voiture, dans la voiture, vers la voiture), I can assure you I don't feel any difference in the status of a word when its grammatical function changes. It's the preposition that bears the function. In French, the nouns are always in "nominative", so to say. Is the noun changed when it "acts" differently?  To keep the theatrical metaphor, it's obvious that, in languages with declensions, nouns come in different disguises according to their function. It's not the case in non-flexional languages, where the nouns — and adjectives and so on — stay in absolute value. (Now for the mathematical metaphor...) I guess it's a big difference in terms of "feeling".


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## Explorer41

PERSEE said:


> do you feel метро as a genitive*? In other words, does it feel _as though_ it was declined?


To be honest, I can't understand your question. There are no ifs in our world. Me personally, I don't think of any cases when speaking "станция метро" -- for me "метро" is just a modifier, in the same way as Genitive nouns can be modifiers or adjectives can be modifiers.

By the way, for me any cases come into the play only when they are used in a clause. The word "станции" has no case meaning by itself -- it can be Genitive, Dative or Locative equally. I know that the word "станцией" is Instrumental, but still, for me it's just the same word as "станция" -- no additional meaning is included until I put the word into a sentence (or, well, until I try to put it in a sentence).

I can suppose you feel the same when changing nouns by number (usually only in writing, as I know), or changing adjectives by gender (in pronunciation too).


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## morzh

PERSEE said:


> Here, I have a question for those of you who are native Russian speakers: in cтанция метро, do you feel метро as a genitive*? In other words, does it feel _as though_ it was declined?
> 
> 
> * I can't find a suitable English translation for the French "complément de nom", literally "noun complement". In French, cтанция метро translates to _station de métro_.



As you probably know yourself, when speaking native language, one rarely thinks of how to use something or how it feels. You just speak the way you know how. It doesn't really feel like anything, I just speak.
The feeling of right/wrong mostly occurs when you yourself misspoke something, or you are not sure how to say it, or someone else speaks and his/her manner of speaking is much different, and so you are subjected to a constant barrage of unfamiliar/unaccustomed to usages.
Otherwise the translation of thought to speech is pretty much subconscious. 

I never think about it. It's just the way it is. Then, when someone says "у него пальта нет", or "кофе очень горячее", I automatically register "illiterate" and keep on going. Otherwise the info enters the mind and the word shell is discarded.


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## PERSEE

Explorer41 said:


> To be honest, I can't understand your question.
> 
> I can suppose you feel the same when changing nouns by number (usually only in writing, as I know), or changing adjectives by gender (in pronunciation too).



You can't understand my question? You answer it very well, though!

You're right, in French nouns change in number and adjectives by gender and number, and this doesn't alter the noun or the adjective in itself. The big difference, for the French learner, is that the changes in Russian are much more numerous! (They can compare only to the changes we French apply to verbs, which must be a real headache for the Russian learner...)


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## PERSEE

morzh said:


> The feeling of right/wrong mostly occurs when (...) someone else speaks and his/her manner of speaking is much different, and so you are subjected to a constant barrage of unfamiliar/unaccustomed to usages.



It happens to me all the time when speaking with French canadians!


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## Explorer41

Actually, I don't think that the analytic/synthetic difference affects the quantity of learning effort needed to acquire a language. On the other hand, when some aspects of a foreign language are more regular (and word inflections are naturally more regular with expressing a meaning than grammar words or non-grammatical means), it should affect the learning curve - you will need to get to know these regularities first.

All that is my IMHO. The conclusion is that you have to deal with Russian cases and case-preposition pairs (oh, these pairs probably will make you most of the trouble with nouns!) much in the same way you deal with prepositions in French and English  - it's in my opinion...


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## Maroseika

PERSEE said:


> Judging by what a French native feels about the equivalents (en voiture, dans la voiture, vers la voiture), I can assure you I don't feel any difference in the status of a word when its grammatical function changes. It's the preposition that bears the function. In French, the nouns are always in "nominative", so to say. Is the noun changed when it "acts" differently?  To keep the theatrical metaphor, it's obvious that, in languages with declensions, nouns come in different disguises according to their function. It's not the case in non-flexional languages, where the nouns — and adjectives and so on — stay in absolute value. (Now for the mathematical metaphor...) I guess it's a big difference in terms of "feeling".


I see.
Then I think the answer to the question about Russian should be 'yes', Russians feel the difference and feel the case of the noun in any word combination (but not of the single noun, as Explorer41 already pointed). This is inevitable, because our brain must decline each and every noun, be it declinable or not. In the latter case the noun will remain unchanged, but not undeclined. Otherwise we just would not be able to make phrases, this is how our language organized.


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## LilianaB

I think honestly that it is easier to learn Russian the natural way than to analyze the grammatical structures in the early stages of learning because Russian is a very complex language grammatically and has many exceptions as well. I have no idea how it would be to learn  Russian by starting with the grammar.  What I mean is that people do not learn the grammatical cases and then apply them but rather speak something that feels natural and the utterance would have the correct grammatical case if it feels completely natural.


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## Maroseika

LilianaB said:


> What I mean is that people do not learn the grammatical cases and then apply them but rather speak something that feels natural and the utterance would have the correct grammatical case if it feels completely natural.


In fact they do learn grammatical cases and then apply them, but those he learnt it in 'natural' way, in their childhood, use the cases and other grammatical categories subconciously. There is even a special zone in our brains responsible for the grammar - one the same for all the languages, and even birds have it exactly their. If it is damaged, people have problems with making phrases from the words, and also birds cannot construct a song from the single chirps. And when we learn the second and following languages, their grammar is localized in the same zone, but separately from the native language.
But anyway, it's quite a matter of taste how to learn languages. Some people like to know the grammar first, others prefer to start speaking like a person with damaged grammar zone, hoping to amass grammar later, and most part, I guess, use a mix of these methods.


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## LilianaB

I am not sure, Maroseika, if it is the same with all languages. If you learn the language in your childhood, it is, but later on, if a person is trying to learn a foreign language, some languages are easier if one starts with the grammatical analysis, or side, whereas others may be easier if they start learning phrases and listen to the language as a whole. You can get so caught up in the grammar and all the exceptions that the person may lose any interest in the language.


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## Explorer41

Maroseika said:


> This is inevitable, because our brain must decline each and every noun, be it declinable or not. In the latter case the noun will remain unchanged, but not undeclined. Otherwise we just would not be able to make phrases, this is how our language organized.


Well, I can't believe in such a thing as "feeling cases" -- it's something mysterious and makes bewilderment. We can feel meanings -- yes: and most often in Russian we _use _both cases and prepositions to _feel_ meanings (just like French use only prepositions for the same task -- to feel meanings). 

Most often, but not always: for example, in the expression "идти к метро" we know that "метро" is an object which defines the direction of our movement. OK, we can know as well, that usually we need the Dative to express a meaning of this kind: for example, we know that if "конь" sounds like "коня", then most likely it is _not_ a target of someone's movement in the phrase (unless somebody made a strong fault in his/her speech, very unnatural for a native). But we don't need this knowledge for understanding and speaking "идти к метро" -- it is absolutely unrelated to our phrase, we just understand the meaning without using cases (and if somebody says "идти к метру" he just chooses to use this knowledge rather than not).

So, we use some knowledge about the language to build phrases. Using that knowledge we _feel_ meanings of phrases. If we need, for example, "рассказать о московском метро", then some knowledge about cases comes into play and we decline the word "московский". We can use the knowledge that it's common to express an association between objects by placing one object after another and putting the second object in the Genitive case -- and then drop knowledge of the second fact out for the word "метро" and use only the first fact. We can even elaborate our knowledge and assign some case to the word "метро", choosing one which will be the most logical (the Locative in this example, and the Dative in the previous one). 

But all that doesn't mean that for every noun in every word combination we feel something related to the noun, called a case (or a case meaning). No, it is not -- because we don't change the form of each and every noun.


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## Maroseika

Explorer41 said:


> But all that doesn't mean that for every noun in every word combination we feel something related to the noun, called a case (or a case meaning). No, it is not -- because we don't change the form of each and every noun.


If one says иди к вокзал, you understand what's meant but easily notice inconsistency. Therefore we really feel cases or better say relation between the components of each and every word combination be its nouns declinable or not. Метро has zero ending in all cases, but this cannot change our attitude to this noun being in the indirect case in the word combination like иди к метро. Otherwise we would have problems with declension of the adjectives paired with such "indeclinable" nouns. And we really have some problems when cases (endings) cannot help us, such as in Это пальто шимпанзе, а это манто бонобо vs Это пальто маленького шимпанзе, а это манто большого бонобо.


----------



## Sobakus

Maroseika said:


> In fact they do learn grammatical cases and then apply them, but those he learnt it in 'natural' way, in their childhood, use the cases and other grammatical categories subconciously. There is even a special zone in our brains responsible for the grammar - one the same for all the languages, and even birds have it exactly their. If it is damaged, people have problems with making phrases from the words, and also birds cannot construct a song from the single chirps. And when we learn the second and following languages, their grammar is localized in the same zone, but separately from the native language.
> But anyway, it's quite a matter of taste how to learn languages. Some people like to know the grammar first, others prefer to start speaking like a person with damaged grammar zone, hoping to amass grammar later, and most part, I guess, use a mix of these methods.


 Is there anywhere I can read up on this bird grammar thing? By the way, I agree with you, I feel cases even when the word remains unchanged. For example, the 3d declension nouns have -и for most cases, still I percieve every one of them as a separate case. Maybe somewhat less with prepositions, that's why they have a tendency to replace declensions. I believe most Russians are surprised when they see the 3d declension's paradigm because of that.


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## LilianaB

Yes, I agree, I do not notice any cases in several languages, three to be more precise, until someone says something in a way that makes me think about it, like the Genitive and Accusative in Russian, or something like that. Until somebody says something unnatural I do not think about cases,  but probably feel them, anyhow


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## Maroseika

Sobakus said:


> Is there anywhere I can read up on this bird grammar thing?



For example, here.


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## estreets

PERSEE said:


> This for me is high acrobatics! I can only dream of a day when I would say this sort of thing without thinking...


Another thing of this high acrobatics 
In the 1st declension there are some words which can be feminine or masculine and this changes their meaning completely, for example глава can mean a chapter and be feminine or can mean a head (глава государства) and be masculine. Or, for example, голова - городской голова (mayor) vs. седая голова (gray head).


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## Explorer41

Maroseika said:


> Therefore we really feel cases or better say relation between the components of each and every word combination be its nouns declinable or not.


OK, that's better  . Agree with you. But still, for French it should be the same. How can we do without differentiating kinds of relations? -- nope, it must be impossible.

So we spoke of two different definitions of cases:
1) a kind of a thing's activity in overall action -- which you have to message no matter what language you use (there are no thingless languages, I guess  );
2) a specific feature of some languages -- to denote a thing's activity and a thing itself in one word. In Russian we use this feature most often, but not always. In French -- never.


Maroseika said:


> There is even a special zone in our brains responsible for the grammar - one the same for all the languages, and even birds have it exactly their. If it is damaged, people have problems with making phrases from the words, and also birds cannot construct a song from the single chirps.


Interesting. Always supposed animals and we are not so far from each other -- or else the Universe is inconsistent and preposterous.


----------



## estreets

PERSEE said:


> Here, I have a question for those of you who are native Russian speakers: in cтанция метро, do you feel метро as a genitive*? In other words, does it feel _as though_ it was declined?
> 
> * I can't find a suitable English translation for the French "complément de nom", literally "noun complement". In French, станция метро translates to _station de métro_.


I'm trying to understand whether I feel this or I just know this. The first idea was as Maroseika put it that we feel this. But then I tried to replace this complement with other words and to see my impressions. For example, we can say станция бордо or станция казино (although no stations of this kind exist  ). With the latter I really don't know whether it a noun complement (определение, выраженное именем существительным в родительном падеже без предлога) or a noun in apposition (приложение). So, I can come to conclusion that probably we rather know this (as we've said and been said to this phrase a lot of times) than we feel this. We know that in the idiom станция метро metro is in the genitive case and thus are able to agree adjectives.
And I'd say word endings show us the cases all the time. For example if we hear a word with a specific ending (for example, -ями) we tend to consider it as a particular case form, in case with -ями as 2 declension (masculine or neuter) plural instrumental.
There is a nice (I'd like to believe) joke showing this tendence.
[я работаю в ресторане ханой]
[кем?!!!!]
In this joke the name of the Vietnamese capital Ханой which sounds like the Instrumental case of the 1 declension is mistaken.
The best example demonstrating this peculiarity is the famous sentence by Lev Shcherba
Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и курдячит бокренка.
in which no one word exists in the Russian language (except _и_, of course  ) but in general we can imagine the incident.
And the main thing for which all the above has been written  is: I suppose, in French a similar phenomenon exists, it's endings of verbes in different persons. I mean, probably the French feel the verb endings just what the Russians feel about the word endings in general (which is a much bigger area).


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## Explorer41

estreets said:


> The best example demonstrating this peculiarity is the famous sentence by Lev Shcherba
> Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и курдячит бокренка.
> in which no one word exists in the Russian language (except _и_, of course  ) but in general we can imagine the incident.


Let me try...

Une chareille macieuse a rencité le cerque carimment et maitenant aligène la cerquine.

My translation is not accurate though, and I believe there exist better ones!


----------



## estreets

Explorer41 said:


> Let me try...
> 
> Une chareille macieuse a rencité le cérque carimment et maitenant aligène la cérquine.
> 
> My translation is not accurate though, and I believe there exist better ones!


J'adore ca! Voyons ce que notre ami Persée va dire.


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## Nanon

Cerque, cerquine.
Je n'aurais pas trouvé .


Je me disais que vous pouviez aussi demander à Persée si et comment on "sent" les articles...


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## morzh

estreets said:


> Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и курдячит бокренка.



There was also that:

"Сяпала калуша по напушке и увазила бутявку. И волит:"Калушата!Калушата! Бутявка!". Калушата присяпали, и бутявку стрямкали. И подудонились."


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## Explorer41

morzh said:


> There was also that:
> 
> "Сяпала калуша по напушке и увазила бутявку. И волит:"Калушата!Калушата! Бутявка!". Калушата присяпали, и бутявку стрямкали. И подудонились."


Варкалось. Хливкие шорьки
Пырялись по наве,
И хрюкотали зелюки,
Как мюмзики в мове!

Эти замечательные строки принадлежат Дине Орловской (если верить Википедии; моё издание "Алисы в Зазеркалье" не сообщает ничего определённого на этот счёт). Они навеяны следующим четверостишьем Льюиса Кэролла:

_" 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
And the mome raths outgrabe. " ,

_и служат его переводом.


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## PERSEE

estreets said:


> J'adore ca! Voyons ce que notre ami Persée va dire.


It's a nice try. Those kinds of sentences conform with the syntax and morphology of the language, it's just the words that don't exist: in French, we call those words "barbarismes". A perfectly grammatical sentence can be made of completely "barbaric" words.

Another nice possibility for creating an absurd text is to choose a poem and to change every word selecting the n following word in the dictionary. I think it's called a lipogram, I'm not sure. It works very well on the La Fontaine fables that we learnt at school, because when you transform the text, the general "music" is still there, but it becomes sheer nonsense.

I also like the opposite example. Using existing words but putting them in an order wherein the sentence cannot mean a thing — because it ain't got that swing anymore! It's what we call in French "une phrase agrammaticale".

Example: Le manger va chien maître son.

(I chose an example with a "substantivated adjective" (le manger), that could perfectly be the subject of the sentence.)

In languages with declensions, I understand the word order is almost free, isn't it?


----------



## morzh

PERSEE said:


> In languages with declensions, I understand the word order is almost free, isn't it?




It's not exactly free. But it is very loose, compared to that of, say, German or English, or Spanish. The sentence almost always will make sense, no matter how you try to shuffle the words, due to agreements between the words using cases, conjugation, gendering etc, but you can be successful in creating such an order where it will look totally screwed up.
And even if it is not screwed up, changing order serves real purposes to emphasize various parts of sentences, or even change the meaning somewhat - one case was discussed couple of days ago here, where moving a word actually changes the unambiguous sentence into ambiguous.


----------



## PERSEE

Nanon said:


> Je me disais que vous pouviez aussi demander à Persée si et comment on "sent" les articles...



That's right, it works in analytic languages too. You get so obsessed with the difficulties of the foreign language that you forget your own language has many headaches in store for the foreigner.

As for articles, it's true we "feel" so much the gender of the noun that we automatically put the right article (_le_ or _la_) before it. This also applies to adjectives, of course.

I have a funny example in my own language. As I was raised in Mexico, I learnt Spanish as a "second mother tongue". And although the two languages are well separated in my brain, there's one word I consistenly mess up: spinach. "La(s) espinaca(s)" being feminine, however hard I try, "épinard" remains feminine for me in French, which it isn't. (It even has a very masculine look and feel, like all words ending with -ard.)
The trouble is the word is mostly used in plural, so when you say "des épinards" or "les/tes épinards", you don't have any gender marker. You can only have one if you use an article with it. And as there is a tendency in spoken French to put the subject in the end, I end up saying: "Elles sont vachement bonnes, les épinards" [Literally, "They're mighty good, those spinach”.] Of course, when I notice my mistake, it's too late, I already said "elles" and "bonnes". Now, either I concentrate and avoid the mistake, or I keep blundering every time. The word "épinard" is masculine, but I "feel" it is feminine. It has retained the Spanish gender, so to speak.

The other day, I learnt that власть was feminine. For a Frenchman, "le pouvoir" is as obviously masculine as "el poder" in Spanish. I will have to see it "in situation" a bit more : такую власть, огромная власть, etc. For the time being, in order to get it into my head, I have to think "_la_ pouvoir". Such is the power of the article!


----------



## morzh

PERSEE said:


> For the time being, in order to get it into my head, I have to think "_la_ pouvoir". Such is the power of the article!



Piece of advice (from a person who learned another language fairly well) - don't think of it as "la pouvoir" or whatever else.
Think of it only as "власть".
Take a few expressions with it, where it is used in such a way, that the gender is obvious, and just remember them as thoughts. "Советская Власть", "народная власть", "власть, не знающая границ", "эта власть мне не подходит" or whatever else.
As long as you translate in your mind, you will get confused. Especially when one language has concepts that the other one lacks.


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## Nanon

You are ready to start studying Bulgarian, Persee. Властта  (just boasting - I have only a few notions about Bulgarian).
Being in a situation close to yours (also with Spanish), I would be tempted to say that I don't have the same problem and that consciously or not, I do more or less what Morzh does (using some context as a "model" when learning a new word), but this might take the current thread too much adrift .


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## LilianaB

Yes, I agree with Morzh. You should not compare languages, but rather accept the grammar of the new language and learn it. It is much easier. Comparative grammar is for different purposes and usually makes only sense in linguistic research related to etymology, origin of languages and things like that. It is a deterrent in foreign language learning, I think, especially if you use it not the way it is meant to be used in the learning process.


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## morzh

Once you learn the language to the point of making it your own (think in it, or at least not to think in your mother tongue and then translate it, however quickly, when you speak - you have to be able to think in the language you speak, while you speaking it), and one day you find out there are very few mysteries left (although I imagine with Russian it will take a bit longer) - then comparative grammar will be lots of fun to look at.
But while you're learning, I would strongly advise to ditch ALL other languages to the maximum degree possible. Of course, in the very beginning it is hard, as some basics have to be explained to you, and the only way to do this is to explain it, using the language you know (though some innovative techniques claim they can do it from the very start - somehow I doubt it; they have some very bad deficiencies). But once you learn your ropes, then - think what you learn. The mind has to be conditioned. Surprisingly, it does not take that long at all. It's just hard to bring yourself to start doing that, but once you get into the groove, it'll open your eyes like nothing else.


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