Thread: Beginning to compose my own sentences

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