# папа/дядя/дедушка - innate gender?



## Hyperpolyglot

should I treat nouns like папа/дядя/дедушка as innately feminine or masculine? I heard conflicting accounts on whether I should consider it as feminine or masculine innately, for example should I just straight up saying папа is a rare exception as a masculine noun and treat it as if it is pure masculine or should I consider it as feminine and because the word describes a male person, that's why I need to use моя instead of мой?

And also is it that when a noun ends with а or я in accusative sentence, it will change to у or ю because they are single feminine nouns or because they happened to change because they end in а or я? For example, я люблю моя маму и папу, did папа gets changed to папу because of the ending "а" or it got changed simply because it is a single feminine noun? If the last one is the case, then папа should be considered innately feminine to begin with right?


----------



## HotIcyDonut

All are masculine:

Папа сильный
Дядя богатый
Дедушка старый

There're words which are exceptions, e.g. урка is masculine by default (can be used for women), it's a slang term for convicted criminals. Папа/дядя/дедушка mean male things only, so look at sense behind'em, not form.

In accusative it's папу/дядю/дедушку because of vowel at the end of original words.


----------



## Hyperpolyglot

HotIcyDonut said:


> In accusative it's папу/дядю/дедушку because of vowel at the end of original words.



So the ending change because of the vowel, but what about the following sentence?

"Everyone knows his name and surname because he is our colleague.
Все знают его имя и фамилию, потому что он наш коллега."

Why is it фамилия changed to фамилию and имя doesn't change to имю? I know that имя is a neuter noun, but that shouldn't matter because the noun ending in accusative sentence changed because of vowel, why didn't имя change in this example?


----------



## HotIcyDonut

Hyperpolyglot said:


> So the ending change because of the vowel, but what about the following sentence?
> 
> "Everyone knows his name and surname because he is our colleague.
> Все знают его имя и фамилию, потому что он наш коллега."
> 
> Why is it фамилия changed to фамилию and имя doesn't change to имю? I know that имя is a neuter noun, but that shouldn't matter because the noun ending in accusative sentence changed because of vowel, why didn't it change in this example?



Because имя is a noun whose nominative/accisative form match. There're a few words with exceptional declension. E.g. метро is undeclineable at all (or, depending on your outlook, you could say that its 6 declensions match regardless of case). E.g.

Я подошёл к метро (not метру), its dative and other cases are indistinguishable from nominative. It's always метро. Its synonymous word метрополитен declines normally:
Я подошёл к метрополитену

That's Russian for you. There're uncount nouns, plural-only nouns, nouns whose singular and plural match, ulindeclineable nouns..  No worries, such words aren't too many. I wouldn't bother with it, there're greater pains to deal with.


----------



## Awwal12

In short, there are many declension paradigms in Russian, which are only loosely related to grammatical gender. Имя, время and some other neuter words which end in -я form a separate paradigm. Most other words ending in -а/-я belong to the so-called 1st declension, but they can be masculine, feminine or belong to the common gender.

There are no means to foretell the gender (let alone the declension) basing solely on the noun's phonetic shape. Both the gender and the declension type must be learned for each word, although it may be not as difficult as it sounds.


----------



## Maroseika

Hyperpolyglot said:


> "Everyone knows his name and surname because he is our colleague.
> Все знают его имя и фамилию, потому что он наш коллега."


Just to add: the words like папа, дядя, дедушка are always masculine by the nature of the objects. But for the words like коллега, старшина, глава (chief) gender is defined contextually. However gender doesn't influence it's declension paradigm, it only governs the gender of the subordinated words (like pronouns, adjectives etc,):
Познакомьтесь с нашей/нашим коллегой.
Познакомьтесь с нашим/нашей коллегой.
Эти документ мы передали вашему/вашей коллеге.
Эти документ нам передала ваша/ваш коллега.


----------



## Ben Jamin

The confusion arises because the grammar uses inaccurate terms. Instead of saying that a noun is masculine or feminine it would be better to say that the "noun has masculine meaning" (that is denotes normally a person or animal of the masculine sex) but has a "grammatically feminine declension pattern".
All languages that has both grammatical gender and declension of nouns have such "hybrid" nouns. Latin is a welle known example, with words like "nauta" (sailor) showing the same duplicity.
In good all times English had two words "sex" (biological) and "gender" (grammatical). Everything was easier to understand. Now the politically correct people have destroyed this harmony applying the word "gender" to biological creatures.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Hyperpolyglot said:


> should I treat nouns like папа/дядя/дедушка as innately feminine or masculine? I heard conflicting accounts on whether I should consider it as feminine or masculine innately, for example should I just straight up saying папа is a rare exception as a masculine noun and treat it as if it is pure masculine or should I consider it as feminine and because the word describes a male person, that's why I need to use моя instead of мой?
> 
> And also is it that when a noun ends with а or я in accusative sentence, it will change to у or ю because they are single feminine nouns or because they happened to change because they end in а or я? For example, я люблю моя маму и папу, did папа gets changed to папу because of the ending "а" or it got changed simply because it is a single feminine noun? If the last one is the case, then папа should be considered innately feminine to begin with right?


What is "innate gender"?


----------



## Awwal12

Ben Jamin said:


> The confusion arises because the grammar uses inaccurate terms. Instead of saying that a noun is masculine or feminine it would be better to say that the "noun has masculine meaning" (that is denotes normally a person or animal of the masculine sex) but has a "grammatically feminine declension pattern".


First, in Russian there is no "feminine declension pattern". The 1st declension group very obviously contains both feminine and masculine nouns (even if the former are clearly dominating), and feminine nouns, in turn, aren't limited to that paradigm at all (cf. степь f., ночь f., рожь f. etc.). Gender isn't directly tied to declension in any manner, it merely dictates gender agreement with attributives and (by default) those predicates which have gender forms.

Second, grammatical gender has very indirect relationships with biological gender as well, at least in Russian. Feminine nouns may refer to male animals (куница, ворона etc.); masculine nouns can even denote women ("она хороший врач").


----------



## Hyperpolyglot

Awwal12 said:


> masculine nouns can even denote women ("она хороший врач").


I thought you add -ка to make a profession feminine, so that it can be used to describe a female worker, for example, журналист = journalist (male), журналистка = journalist (female), so shouldn't a woman doctor be врачка?


----------



## HotIcyDonut

Hyperpolyglot said:


> I thought you add -ка to make a profession feminine, so that it can be used to describe a female worker, for example, журналист = journalist (male), журналистка = journalist (female), so shouldn't a woman doctor be врачка?



No. Some professions have only masculine form. Он врач, она врач. Он президент, она президент. Он министр, она министр. Он сомелье, она сомелье. Он сэйю, она сэйю. Он солдат, она солдат. Он инженер, она инженер. Он киллер, она киллер. Он мэр, она мэр. Он губернатор, она губернатор. Etc.

Some have feminine form, but masculine is also correct to use (but feminine can't be used for male person):

Он полицейский is ok
Она полицейский is ok
Она полицейская is ok
Он полицейская is wrong

Полицейский, полицейская; актёр, актриса; певец, певица; сварщик, сварщица; директор, директриса; пианист, пианистка; целитель, целительница...

Same for word feauturing "мен" part, they replace it for "вумен"

Он бизнесмен
Она бизнесмен
Она бизнесвумен

Directly borrowed from English


----------



## Awwal12

Hyperpolyglot said:


> I thought you add -ка to make a profession feminine, so that it can be used to describe a female worker, for example, журналист = journalist (male), журналистка = journalist (female), so shouldn't a woman doctor be врачка?


Some "professional" nouns for women are indeed formed in that manner, but it isn't a regular and universally applicable pattern of word formation at all. Other nouns of that kind are formed with -ш- and -их- suffixes (геймерша, стриптизёрша, кассирша, портниха), sometimes adding one of these suffixes results in a (low) colloquial or obsolete word (especially true for -их- suffix: врачиха, повариха, сторожиха), and sometimes it is just impossible.


----------



## Sobakus

Hyperpolyglot said:


> Why is it фамилия changed to фамилию and имя doesn't change to имю? I know that имя is a neuter noun, but that shouldn't matter because the noun ending in accusative sentence changed because of vowel, why didn't имя change in this example?



Quite simply because имя has the stem имен-. This paradigm's Nom. Sg. ending -я being the same as the soft-stem -a declension's Nom. Sg. ending is a mere coincidence and a regular development of the earlier nasal vowel /ę/.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Awwal12 said:


> First, in Russian there is no "feminine declension pattern". The 1st declension group very obviously contains both feminine and masculine nouns (even if the former are clearly dominating), and feminine nouns, in turn, aren't limited to that paradigm at all (cf. степь f., ночь f., рожь f. etc.). Gender isn't directly tied to declension in any manner, it merely dictates gender agreement with attributives and (by default) those predicates which have gender forms.
> 
> Second, grammatical gender has very indirect relationships with biological gender as well, at least in Russian. Feminine nouns may refer to male animals (куница, ворона etc.); masculine nouns can even denote women ("она хороший врач").


For a foreign learner this declension appears clearly as feminine gender. Naming is an issue of convention.
By the way, what is the proportion of masculine nouns in the 1st declension, and proportion of masculine nouns with the 1st declension pattern to the total of masculine nouns?


----------



## Awwal12

Ben Jamin said:


> By the way, what is the proportion of masculine nouns in the 1st declension, and proportion of masculine nouns with the 1st declension pattern to the total of masculine nouns?


Both must be negligible, but, more importantly, pretty basic words like папа, дядя and дедушка do belong to the first declension. Calculating the absolute number of words in the language is rarely productive. A 7-year old child has not ever heard 95% of them, yet he doesn't make more grammatical mistakes in the standard language than an average adult.


Ben Jamin said:


> For a foreign learner this declension appears clearly as feminine gender.


It may be so, but such false assumption will likely result in incorrect gender agreement and/or declension in many situations.


----------



## igusarov

Ben Jamin said:


> By the way, what is the proportion of masculine nouns in the 1st declension, and proportion of masculine nouns with the 1st declension pattern to the total of masculine nouns?


Both are far below 1%. Masculine nouns ending in 'а' are very uncommon. To those thee already mentioned in the thread subject I can add "мужчина", "юноша", "старшина".
Apart from those rare words, many masculine given names end in 'а/я': Никита, Данила, Вася, Петя, Коля.
And sometimes it's possible to append diminutive suffixes '-ушк/-ишк' to a masculine noun thus producing a masculine word ending in '-а/я':
"сын" --> "сынишка"
"мальчик" --> "мальчишка"
"зайчик" --> "зайчишка"
"парень" --> "парнишка"
"дед" --> "дедушка"
"старик" --> "старикашка"


----------



## Awwal12

igusarov said:


> Both are far below 1%. Masculine nouns ending in 'а' are very uncommon. To those thee already mentioned in the thread subject I can add "мужчина", "юноша", "старшина".


There are many nouns of the common gender in the 1st declension group, though, which also shouldn't be ignored (убийца, пьяница, соня, сластёна, забулдыга, возница, тихоня etc.), since they may have semantically dependent masculine agreement as well.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Awwal12 said:


> It may be so, but such false assumption will likely result in incorrect gender agreement and/or declension in many situations.


Not if you understand gender correctly as a grammatical category, and don't confuse it with declension pattern.


----------

