Thread: единственное, что

Originally Posted by iCake

You can safely use единственная вещь. As for the neutral gender when you omit вещь, it's because единственное becomes a noun of its own, there is no reference back at вещь there and since you mean something abstract with единственное it becomes neutral.

Thanks iCake! You are absolutely right. It becomes a noun but I didn't know that its independence immediately transforms it to neutral. For example ванная remains female because the подразумеваемое слово is комната.
Btw as I noticed I am celebrating 1,500 posts!
I became "Завсегдатай"!! I don't even know what this word means! Now I possess new advanced superpowers?
Omg! Still I didn't learn russian and I am keeping posting

Originally Posted by Antonio1986

For example ванная remains female because the подразумеваемое слово is комната.

That's exactly the point, in that case ванная can only refer to one specific thing, which is комната. When you say единственное, что... единственное can refer to a multitute of things there, there is nothing specific that immediately associates with it, that's why it just must be neutral. Almost the same as вещь btw, you don't really know what the nature of вещь is until it's clarified further along in the sentence, but as вещь is a proper noun with its own gender, grammar rules demand you use femenine with it.

Congrats on becoming завсегдатай, let's hope I'll reach that high one day as well