The Noun: Gender

stasya | 22.01.2011 | 0

The noun (іменник [i'mɛn:ɪk]) — is the main part of speech and it is the basis of Ukrainian grammar. Ukrainian nouns have three genders, they can be singular and plural and what is more important they have seven cases. Unlike English they do not have articles.

Depending on the noun's gender, number or case the other parts of speech (i.e. adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, numerals and verbs) will change.

For example:

Цей чоловік кладе книжку на стіл. — This man is putting (puts) a book on the table.

What we have here is the main noun “чоловік” (a predicate) which is masculine, singular and in nominal case (answers the question: “who?”). According to this we have to change the pronoun and the verb.

Let's talk about the genders

There are three of them:

  1. Masculine (чоловічий рід).

  2. Feminine (жіночий рід).

  3. Neuter (середній рід).

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Combined

There is also a combined type of gender which works both for masculine and feminine, masculine and neuter, feminine and neuter or even three of them.

Such are:

, , , , , ,