Thread: Is друга a feminine version of друг? nouns referring to male&fem without changing?

Originally Posted by yswaq

Are there any nouns that refer to males AND females without changing form according to gender? It would have a "ь" at the end, wouldn't it?

And I'm also having some confusion about the word человек. It means "person", right? People usually use it when talking to an older guy. Would they do the same thing with an older woman? What is the feminine version of человек?

«ь» at the end of a word indicates that the ending is soft. However, those words still have gender cases and, unfortunately, you just have to memorize which words are masculine, and which are feminine. For example:

тетрадь is feminine

словарь is masculine.

I wish there was a trick that could be used to remember which words belong to which gender, but to my knowledge there is no such thing.

As for the друга topic:

друга is masculine, it has just been declined from the nominative case друг into either genative, or accusative (depending on the context).

У моего друга есть футбольный мяч. --- Is in an example of genative case declination of друг

Она любит своего друга. --- Is in an example of accusative case declination of друг


Человек

Человек can mean either man or woman (person), but many times is often regarding a man, from what I know. In my class, we usually assosiate Человек with man (person - if we are unsure of the context), and usually address women as женщина.


I hope that I have helped some.

Both друг and человек can refer to someone of either gender, but without context, it will be assumed that they refer to a male.

In fact, it's exactly the same as in English - "She's a good women." means she's good on account of her feminine qualities
"He's a good man." - he's good because of some masculine qualities.
"He/She's a good person" - he/she is simply good in a way that is not gender specific.

The third sentence will use человек in Russian. However, in general, if you use the word человек, it would be assumed that you mean a male person, unless the context was obviously referring to people in general or to a female.

For example: В комнату зашел человек. - people would assume that a man entered the room.

подруга means friend when a girl is speaking about another girl, but if a boy is speaking, it means his girlfriend (i.e., that they are in a romantic relationship). If a male is speaking about a female who is just a friend you can use друг or знакомая. If you want to say "She's not just my wife, but she's my best friend too," then you would also say друг.