Originally posted by: TseDanylo on Duolingo Archived here
Вітаю!
Ukrainian is an East Slavic language spoken primarily in Western and Central Ukraine by 40 million people making it the third most spoken Slavic language by number of native speakers in the world!
If there are any terms you do not understand please refer to the grammar glossary
Wait what?
Yes, the title doesn't make sense, but here is what I'll be explaining today.
In Ukrainian, as we know, nouns can be either masculine, feminine or neuter. But something else to note is that nouns can also have types. This is different to gender because with gender there is agreement between individual words. For example.
- Красна мова - Beautiful language
As we can see, мова is feminine and singular. This means that the adjective, красний, changes to its feminine singular form.
But we word types, this is a part of the word itself. Also, its not just for nouns either! Adjectives and nouns can have types but not pronouns (they're completely irregular). From the adjectives post, we can see that because some adjectives have a different nominative endings, they have different case endings. We have already covered types of adjectives here but today, we will be covering nouns.
Nouns, unlike adjectives, have three types instead of two: Hard, Soft and Mixed. Hence the title!
How do I tell what type a noun is?
Telling what type a noun is a bit complicated but thankfully even though it's rule based, it very regular!
MASCULINE
Hard nouns end in б, в, г, ґ, д, з, к, л, м, н, п, с, т, ф, х
Soft nouns end in ь preceded by д, дз, з, л, н, с, т or ц
Or in й preceded by a vowel
Some soft nouns end in р
Mixed nouns end in ж, ч, ш or щ
FEMININE
Hard nouns end in а preceded by б, в, г, ґ, д, з, к, л, м, н, п, с, т, ф, х
Soft nouns end in я preceded by д, дз, з, л, н, с, т or ц
Or in я preceded by р or a vowel
Mixed nouns end in а preceded by ж, ч, ш or щ
NEUTER
Hard nouns end in о preceded by б, в, г, ґ, д, з, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х
Soft nouns end in е preceded byл, р or ц
Or in є preceded by a vowel
Or in я preceded by a double letter
Mixed nouns end in е preceded by ж, ч or щ
Note that many loanwords never change e.g.метро, аудіо or медіа