Thread: Beginning to compose my own sentences

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])

Soft sign
Just a piece of advice, they basically know how to pronounce Russian sounds so you can confine yourself to giving Russian variants of sounding, like [шыш], [лож], etc.

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

Originally Posted by kgcole

Спасибо Eugene…много вещи учиться хотя этот прекрасный

The most important thing is that I've managed to understand you. Grats on that

Originally Posted by egalor

The most important thing is that I've managed to understand you. Grats on that

Hopefully I'm making progress in becoming more understandable. Thanks for the encouragement.