# All Slavic languages: different genders



## jazyk

I was wondering whether there are many Slavic cognates that have different genders. The only example I can think of is Czech večer, Polish wieczór and Russian вечер, which are masculine, and Macedonian вечер, which is feminine. Maybe this phenomenon is not as widespread as it is with Romance languages?


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## Maroseika

jazyk said:


> I was wondering whether there are many Slavic cognates that have different genders. The only example I can think of is Czech večer, Polish wieczór and Russian вечер, which are masculine, and Macedonian вечер, which is feminine. Maybe this phenomenon is not as widespread as it is with Romance languages?


Are you sure about Macedonian? This dictionary says its also masculine: http://www.lingvisto.org/maced/makedonski.php?slovo=%E2%E5%F7%E5%F0


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## jazyk

Strange. I knew вечер to be masculine, and that's why the greeting is добра вечер and not добaр вечер (at least as far I know). Maybe it's an inanimate word that has both genders? This isn't unheard of in many languages. Spanish, for example, has lots of them.


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## Maroseika

Croatian is also добра вечер...
And вечера (definately - feminine) - supper (Rus. вечеря).


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## sokol

Yes, in Croatian it's feminine _dobra večer,_ but in Slovenian it is masculine _dober večer._

I guess there wouldn't be very much examples for different genders with Slavic languages as declension (and declension paradigms) are much more alive in Slavic languages except in Macedonian and Bulgarian - and this obviously would work towards conservation of gender.


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## Maroseika

sokol said:


> Yes, in Croatian it's feminine _dobra večer,_ but in Slovenian it is masculine _dober večer._
> 
> I guess there wouldn't be very much examples for different genders with Slavic languages as declension (and declension paradigms) are much more alive in Slavic languages except in Macedonian and Bulgarian - and this obviously would work towards conservation of gender.


I also think declension by use of endings is the main reason: gender is so tightly connected with the endings, that it may change (due to some occasional reasons) only if ending is always zero.


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## dudasd

jazyk said:


> I knew вечер to be masculine, and that's why the greeting is добра вечер and not добaр вечер.


 
You probably meant the opposite, for добра is feminine and добaр is masculine. 

Feminine words that don't end with a vowel generally tend to "convert" into masculine gender. In Serbian, it is very common in local dialects, but not only there. For example, the word "splav" (raft) was feminine, then a doublet; nowadays it's recognized as masculine gender only. In Serbian and Croatian that tendency isn't strong, in Macedonian as well (or it wasn't, at least), but I've discovered many examples of feminine to masculine conversion in Bulgarian.


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## jazyk

> You probably meant the opposite, for добра is feminine and добaр is masculine.


Yes, I did.  Thanks for pointing it out.


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## Duya

dudasd said:


> Feminine words that don't end with a vowel generally tend to "convert" into masculine gender.



Duda forgot to mention that Serbian _veče _is neuter, thus the greeting is _dobro veče_; I suppose it's another realization of the same phenomenon. It coexists with feminine _večer, _but that is more characteristic for Croatian.


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## dudasd

Duya said:


> Duda forgot to mention that Serbian _veče _is neuter, thus the greeting is _dobro veče_; I suppose it's another realization of the same phenomenon. It coexists with feminine _večer, _but that is more characteristic for Croatian.


 
Yes, I forgot to mention that phenomenon in Serbian.  Thanks, Duya. "Veče" (n.) is used in nominative and accusative, in vocative it is used paralelly with the feminine form, and in other noun cases it's declined as "večer" (f) (the same declension type as "kost, kosti, kosti", not to be confused with the "mati, matere, materi" declension):

n: veče 
g: večeri
d: večeri
a: veče
v: veče / večeri
i: večeri
l: večeri

Of course, in literary texts you may happen to find "večer" in nominative and accusative sometimes as well. (Though not often.) Also, all the derived words keep "r": večera (dinner), večernji (adj. evening), večernje (late afternoon liturgy), etc.


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## Athaulf

Duya said:


> Duda forgot to mention that Serbian _veče _is neuter, thus the greeting is _dobro veče_; I suppose it's another realization of the same phenomenon. It coexists with feminine _večer, _but that is more characteristic for Croatian.



Curiously, even though _večer_ is never masculine in Croatian in any other context, the greeting _dobra večer_ often mutates into _dobar večer_. In some dialects, it's even pronounced as a single word _dobarvečer_, with a long rising accent on _a_ and a long second _e_.


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## Athaulf

jazyk said:


> I was wondering whether there are many Slavic cognates that have different genders. The only example I can think of is Czech večer, Polish wieczór and Russian вечер, which are masculine, and Macedonian вечер, which is feminine. Maybe this phenomenon is not as widespread as it is with Romance languages?



It's certainly not nearly as widespread. As someone has already pointed out, the complex Slavic gender-dependent declensions tend to prevent nouns from shifting genders easily. Furthermore, with the disappearance of the Latin neuter gender, the neuter nouns had to fit into either masculine or feminine gender (well, some of them made a bit of a mess in Italian ). Although they mostly ended up masculine, some of them took different paths in various Romance languages. Nothing like this ever happened in Slavic languages, since the neuter gender is still going strong in them. 

The only large class of nouns that tend to shift gender in Slavic languages are the feminine nouns ending in consonants, as mentioned by Dudasd above, one of which is also featured in your above example. Other such words are, for example, Croatian _zvijer_ (f) vs. Russian _зверь_ (m) (= "beast"), or Croatian _vlas_ (f) vs. Russian _волос_ (m) (= "hair"). Interestingly, _zver _is also sometimes masculine in Serbian. 

One interesting case where I have no idea how exactly the genders of the cognates diverged is that of Croatian _godina_ (f) vs. Russian _год_ (m), both meaning "year". It seems like either the Croatian word gained a suffix that changed its gender, but not its meaning, or the Russian word lost one.


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## papillon

An interesting example is the word собака (_sobaka) _- dog, canine. The word is, logically, feminine in Russian, but, for some reason, masculine in Ukrainian.

Angry dog: _Rus_: злая собака; _Ukr_: злий собака.


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## Blacklack

papillon said:


> An interesting example is the word собака (_sobaka) _- dog, canine. The word is, logically, feminine in Russian, but, for some reason, masculine in Ukrainian.


This word was also masculine in Russian back in XV century and maybe later.


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## cyanista

papillon said:


> An interesting example is the word собака (_sobaka) _- dog, canine. The word is, logically, feminine in Russian, but, for some reason, masculine in Ukrainian.



Here are some Belarusian/Russian differences:

BEL m - RUS f

ахапак - охапка 
боль - боль
гармонiк - гармоника
медаль - медаль
насып - насыпь
палын - полынь
пачак - пачка
подпiс - подпись
пыл - пыль
сабака - собака
стэп - степь
туфель - туфля 
цень - тень
шаль –  шаль
шынель - шинель 


BEL f - RUS m

гусь - гусь
жырафа - жираф m (outdated жирафа f) 
камода - комод 
салата - салат
 таполя - тополь

BEL m RUS n  яблык - яблоко 
BEL f RUS n  какава - какао

  Source (in Belarusian)


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## jazyk

I just remember two other words:

Polish bank and adres are masculine.
Czech banka and adresa are feminine.


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## Athaulf

jazyk said:


> I just remember two other words:
> 
> Polish bank and adres are masculine.
> Czech banka and adresa are feminine.



However, these words aren't cognates, but rather common non-Slavic loanwords.  Among loanwords, it's easy to find huge numbers of those that have been adopted with different genders in various Slavic languages. In fact, for any common loanword whose original doesn't have a meaning or suffix that strongly suggests a gender  to Slavic speakers, it's likely that its genders will be all over the place. Just a few examples between Croatian and Russian: _radio_ (m) - _радио_ (n), _banana_ (f) - _банан_ (m), _lokomotiva_ (f) - _локомотив_ (m), _viski_ (m) - _виски   _ (n), _salata_ (f) - _салат_ (m), _milijarda_ (f) - _миллиард_ (m)... 

In my opinion, such examples are much less interesting than real Slavic cognates whose genders have drifted apart in different languages.


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