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Thread: Basic question about gender

  1. #1
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    Basic question about gender

    I just need to clear up what happens when the noun is one gender and the person represented by the noun is another.

    The good male teacher said:
    хорощий препадавтель сказал

    The good female teacher said:
    хорощая препадавтель сказала?

    The good male orphan went home:
    хорощий сирота шёл домой

    The good female orphan went home:
    хорощая сирота шла домой?

    Basically; if the noun is masculine or common gender but the person represented by it is female (and vice versa) does either adjective or the verb follow the gender of the person or agree with the noun?

    спасибо
    Исправьте ошибки в моём русском, пожалуйста

  2. #2
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    The most common case of gender mismatch is when grammatical gender is masculine and actual gender is feminine (человек, преподаватель, рабочий, сотрудник and so on).
    In such case, adjectives agree in grammatical gender and verbs usually agree in actual gender:
    Хороший преподаватель сказала...

    What about сирота, it is marked as общий род in a dictionary, which means you can agree other words in both masculine and feminine:
    male: хороший сирота шёл
    female: хорошая сирота шла

    Referring to a male person with grammatically feminine nouns is rare enough. I can think of such words as личность, персона. (...задница, сволочь, скотина... ooh, or not so rare )
    It seems they always require agreement to grammatical gender.
    "Он пришел?"
    "Нет, эта ленивая личность сегодня не явилась."
    fortheether and justinwyllie like this.

  3. #3
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    Thanks RedFox.

    So. Just to confirm; in the case of the feminine noun e.g. личность the verb follows the grammatical gender?

    Спасибо
    Исправьте ошибки в моём русском, пожалуйста

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