# шоссе



## Konstantinos

Когда мы ехали по шоссе, нас обогнал экскурсионный автобус.

Шоссе is the first indeclinable noun I see in Russian. Can you explain to me, why does it happen? It looks like, that it could be easily declined.


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## Awwal12

Konstantinos said:


> It looks like, that it could be easily declined.


It could, but it has just happened so that loanwords ending in -е and -о aren't declined. Overall it seems to go back to the early 19th century, when Russian noblemen were mostly speaking French as their first language, so they were just code-switching every time they encountered a French word. In the end, loans ending in a consonant and in -a started to be declined as usual, but with the discussed class of loanwords non-declension has somehow stuck.


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## pimlicodude

There are very many indeclinable words in Russian. Кофе, такси and шоу are the most common, but the Russian wiktionary has a tag for undeclined nouns:
Категория:Несклоняемые существительные/ru — Викисловарь


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## Rosett

Konstantinos said:


> It looks like, that it could be easily declined.


«Шоссе» is invariable, but it has neuter grammatical gender. All its attributes and predicates must agree with «шоссе» as neuter.

Сапата - Перевод на английский - примеры русский | Reverso Context
Первоклассное шоссе пересекло непроходимые ранее болота Сапата, ряд районов в горах Сьерра-Маэстра. A first-class highway now intersects the formerly ...

«Наши шоссе закупорены транспортом... Our highways are clogged with traffic» (Reverso)

Универ soloBY › напоминает...
Dec 24, 2019 — Что тебе напоминает убегающее вдаль чёрное шоссе, блестящее после дождя? Есенин "Пороша"

РИАМО в Подольске - новости, афиша, справочник организаций, расписание › article › z...
Sept 29, 2020 — Эта церковь находится на излучине реки Нары недалеко от старого шоссе Москва — Серпухов, в местечке Глубоково.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> It could, but it has just happened so that loanwords ending in -е and -о aren't declined.


I suppose it could only if turned into something like "*шОсье" or "*шосьё"


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## MIDAV

Konstantinos said:


> It looks like, that it could be easily declined.


How would you even decline it? I can't think of a declension pattern that this word could EASILY fit into. In fact, I can't think of any at all. Maybe I'm missing something. What are declinable Russian words ending in a stressed е?


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## Awwal12

MIDAV said:


> Maybe I'm missing something. What are declinable Russian words ending in a stressed е?


In fact, the main issue here is not the stressed /э/ (you can compare numerous native words ending in stressed /o/ and declined by the same general paradigm) but the hard /с/ before it (which may be not immediately apparent for a foreign learner seeing the word).


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## Maroseika

Awwal12 said:


> In fact, the main issue here is not the stressed /э/ (you can compare numerous native words ending in stressed /o/ and declined by the same general paradigm) but the hard /с/ before it (which may be not immediately apparent for a foreign learner seeing the word).


Even with the soft consonant, the word would probably acquire something else in the end facilitating declension, like филей < филе (filet), буржуй < буржуа (bourgeois) or камея < camée.
Also colloquial declinable шоссейка.


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## Awwal12

Maroseika said:


> Even with the soft consonant, the word would probably acquire something else in the end facilitating declension, like филей < филе (filet), буржуй < буржуа (bourgeois) or камея < camée.


Буржуа ends in a vocalic combination and therefore cannot be declined quite fundamentally, so it's a bit different. Камея is not a direct loan from French - the medium language was German, where Kamee is feminine (in French it's actually masculine, < camaeus), so it required final /-a/, and after a vowel that could only be attached with /й/. Филей might be a convincing example, but I'm not sure if /й/ here doesn't simply facilitate an imitation of French close /e/ (I haven't thoroughly studied Russian Gallicisms, I'm afraid).


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## Konstantinos

I had in my mind something like that:

шоссе
шосся
шоссю
шоссе
шоссем
шоссе

шосся
шоссей
шоссям
шосся
шоссями
шоссях


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## Maroseika

No native would ever use any of these forms, no matter how colloquial is his speech. Especially endings -я, -ю, -ем look weird, because the last consonant in шоссе is hard.
Cf.: поле - поля, полем, полю and пол - пола, полом, полу.

But, for example, шасси́ (chassis) can be low colloquially or jokingly declined as if this is Plural of *шаcсь (also cf. ша́сси in the professional slang, probably reflecting same tendency).


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## Awwal12

Konstantinos said:


> шоссе
> шосся


...With a change in softness (totally atypical here). A more realistic approach would be шоссе - шосса - шоссу etc., but as a whole this supposed paradigm still looks weird; the only Russian (more or less native) nouns ending in a hard consonant + /-э/ are the nouns ending in -це (солнце, блюдце etc.), but those contain the suffix -ц- < *-ьk-, which effectively results in a kind of separate sub-paradigm (cf. блюдце - блюдец).

P.S.: And, of course, the inflection in such words is always unstressed.


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## nizzebro

One could use шоссейка if really need to decline it - only that this form sounds like folkish or low-colloquial.


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## pimlicodude

nizzebro said:


> One could use шоссейка if really need to decline it - only that this form sounds like folkish or low-colloquial.


What about трасса? Is that a full equivalent? Or does it only refer to a track?


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## Rosett

pimlicodude said:


> What about трасса? Is that a full equivalent? Or does it only refer to a track?


Далеко не все трассы имеют твёрдое покрытие, например, в Сибири и на Севере.


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## nizzebro

Трасса is such, you know, a general and more informal, out-of-category term. Шоссе is used in official names of roads, meaning in principle the same as highway, assuming both speed and decent quality for the surface.
Трасса is any sort of long-distance road, where the matter is sufficient non-stop gaps between settlements, while the road quality doesn't much matter; in principle it is also a highway, but only as compared to local low-speed ways, and not used in formal classifications.


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## Rosett

Maroseika said:


> Even with the soft consonant, the word would probably acquire something else in the end facilitating declension, like филей < филе (filet), буржуй < буржуа (bourgeois) or камея < camée.
> Also colloquial declinable шоссейка.


Существует узкоспециальное разговорное слово «шоссей», склоняемое по обычной парадигме, но оно зарезервировано за  велосипедом для шоссейных гонок.


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## nizzebro

(to add to #16) however, they use трасса in news, police reports and like, to refer to federal-level roads that are named or numbered; I'm not sure if it is a formal term, or just a style they use.


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## Awwal12

I probably should note that a lot of streets in Moscow (as well as in some other cities) are officially called "шоссе" ("highway"). Typically (but not necessary, taking the city's history into account) they continue beyond the borders of Moscow under the same name as well. Some examples are Ленингра́дское шоссе (starts in Moscow, crosses its borders 5 times and ends only shortly before Tver - though in a couple of towns the highway may bear different names), Дми́тровское шоссе (starts in Moscow, passes through Dmitrov and ends in Dubna, still in Moscow oblast) and шоссе Энтузиастов (starts in Moscow and ends in Balashikha in Moscow oblast, where it first transforms into Vladimirskaya Street and then into Gorkovskoye Highway). Коро́винское шоссе, Открытое шоссе and Ами́ньевское шоссе are fully contained inside the borders of Moscow.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> I probably should note that a lot of streets in Moscow (as well as in some other cities) are officially called "шоссе" ("highway").


In European part of Russia, yes, there are a lot of streets called 'шоссе' that can be important city driveways.
In Urals and Siberia, there are mostly those called 'тракт' historically, as remains of  old roads between cities.


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> that can be important city driveways.


Or not.  In the case of Moscow, at some point in the past all of them were roads connecting the city to other places, of very different importance. But the city has expanded, and many other things have changed too. So we have Leningradskoye Highway - a major artery and the main road connecting Moscow with St.Petersburg, but also Otkrytoye Highway - just a 4-lane street which started as a road connecting Moscow to pretty much nothing (really), while Andronovskoye Highway is a 2-line, one mile-long road in the middle of some industrial district.


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