Thread: Gender Confusion

Originally Posted by Dreams

So... are there always pairs of words to show male and female, and it's just a matter of learning them?

Not always.

It's a complicated matter often a source of wordplay and confusion.

Sometimes there are couples of sex-specific words like "мужчина" - "женщина" ("man" - "woman") "кобель" - "сука" ("he-dog" - "bitch"), "жеребец" - "кобыла" ("stallion" - "mare") but only for a few animals.

Normally there is one word which denotes the animal no matter of sex and grammatical gender. For example "человек" (mas.) usually means human being by default and applicable to both a man and a woman. "Лошадь" (fem.) means a horse by default. "Ёж" (mas.) means a hedgehog by default.

Then there are synonyms, each of them has more or less random grammatical gender which sometimes more or less relate to the sex, sometimes not. "Конь" (mas., "steed") usually means he-horse but it is not so necessary. "Кляча" (fem., "jade"), "одр" (mas., "jade") has no relation to sex... err... mostly. etc.

Then there are words specifically opposing the "default animal" word to represent specifical sex wth grammatical gender opposite to "default": "утка" (fem., any duck or she-duck) - "селезень" (mas., only he-duck); ёж - ежиха etc. Often sex- specific word in such pair has vernacular flavour.

When one speaks about an individual animal and want to emphasize its sex one can use words "самец" and "самка" ("stag" and "doe") - "самка ежа"="she-hedgehog" - but this way is rather formal. In usual speaking people try to avoid it.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

"Лошадь" (fem.) means a horse by default.

Originally Posted by doninphxaz

Originally Posted by it-ogo

"Лошадь" (fem.) means a horse by default.

Corrected. Sometimes typos are more dangerous than usual.

Спасибо.
That helps me. :)