Thread: Beginning to compose my own sentences

yes, it is. научиться needs dative. or an infinitive. Научиться делать что-либо or научиться рисованию / чтению / пению....

That makes sense. I was wondering, Eugene, do you have any tips on how I can know the gendre of a noun that ends in "ь"? Do I just have to memorize which words are which?

Originally Posted by kgcole

That makes sense. I was wondering, Eugene, do you have any tips on how I can know the gendre of a noun that ends in "ь"?

Sure -- if the genitive singular ends in -и, then the noun is feminine, but if the genitive singular ends in -я, then the noun is masculine!

Which is, of course, just another way of saying that when you learn a new Russian noun, it's a good practice to memorize the nominative singular AND the genitive singular at the same time. (For the majority of nouns, knowing these two forms will allow you to correctly determine the gender and to logically deduce all the other forms. Of course, there are exceptions -- some nouns have irregular patterns in the plural, so memorizing only the singular forms won't help you there.)

In the same way, when you learn a new Russian verb, memorizing the infinitive isn't enough. At minimum, you should learn the infinitive, the 1st-person sg., and the 2nd-person sg., -- most of the time, you'll be able to work out all the other forms given these three.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Sure -- if the genitive singular ends in -и, then the noun is feminine, but if the genitive singular ends in -я, then the noun is masculine!

That's a good way of looking at it, Throbert. Of course, that's if the sentence is already written. I'm thinking more along the lines of how to know just by the nominative case itself with words ending in -ь. Somebody wrote once that words ending in -ность tend to be feminine, so that's a big help and narrows the field somewhat. But then there are words like жизнь...you basically just have to know it's feminine.

Originally Posted by kgcole

That makes sense. I was wondering, Eugene, do you have any tips on how I can know the gendre of a noun that ends in "ь"? Do I just have to memorize which words are which?

Some Russian consonants (ш, ж, ч, щ, ц) do not form hard/soft pairs.
If a noun has one of such consonants before the final ‘ь’ (i. e. it ends in -шь, -жь, -чь, or -щь), then it definitely is feminine.
That's because of a (strange) spelling rule. According to it the letter ‘ь’ must be placed after these consonants (except ц) only if the noun is feminine (this ‘ь’ doesn't affect the pronunciation).

For example:

мышь — feminine (pronounced [mɨʂ])
шиш — masculine (pronounced [ʂɨʂ])

ложь — feminine (pronounced [ɫoʂ])
нож — masculine (pronounced [noʂ])

печь — feminine (pronounced [pʲeʨ])
меч — masculine (pronounced [mʲeʨ])

вещь — feminine (pronounced [vʲeɕː])
клещ — masculine (pronounced [klʲeɕː])

Originally Posted by Soft sign

Some Russian consonants (ш, ж, ч, щ, ц) do not form hard/soft pairs.
If a noun has one of such consonants before the final ‘ь’ (i. e. it ends in -шь, -жь, -чь, or -щь), then it definitely is feminine.
That's because of a (strange) spelling rule. According to it the letter ‘ь’ must be placed after these consonants (except ц) only if the noun is feminine (this ‘ь’ doesn't affect the pronunciation).

That's good information to know, and helps a lot. Thanks