Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
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.