Like один, одна and одно, два and две, please don't tell me all numbers have genders, if so, please politely explain to me how high/far up it goes.
Yes, only 1 and 2. But technically, the number of gendered numbers in Russian is infinite :-) Because all numbers that end with 1 or 2 (except ones that end with 11 or 12) have difefrent genders.
And also for all the numbers that end with 1 or 2 (except those which end in 11 or 12), like 21 - двадцать один день, двадцать одна ночь.
А как же тройка, четверка, пятерка…?
четвёрка ночь? четвёрка день? в чём вопрос, речь не об этом вообще, то про что ты говоришь - это существительные, у которых всегда один род, как бы ты их ни склонял. тут речь про числительные
Yes they have genders + cases. 1 has all four, 2 has two genders and the rest has only one variation from genders but with the case thing differentiation increases. Like there are a lot of variations of '1'
Одни одна одно одни одного одной одних одному одним одну одними одном
'2,3,4' has a bit less
Два две двух двум двумя - три трёх трём трёмя - четыре четырёх четырём четырьмя
Numbers 5-100 have 2 to 3 variations and it goes to infinity.
I suggest studying the topic "ADJECTIVES". After that it'll all start to make sense.
I'm Russian and I'm terrified by my own language.
The main reason I moved to the States fr
I guess that's not what OP is asking. While три has cases, it doesn't change when the gender of the name following it changes.
Also, it's not about adjectives. When talking about ordinal numbers (first second...) they're gendered adjectives, but again, not the question.
Thanks, 🫠
I REALLY feel that emoji😭 it is a nice language but those endings and cases (im hungarian we have WAYY more lol)
I'm an American, and it makes me want to learn French, 🥹
Learning Russian is a looooong game. If you stick with it for a year or two (depending on how much/hard you study), just learning one one thing at a time and accepting that there are big chunks you don't understand, and just keep plugging away at it, things will really start to open up to you. It's an incredible feeling when you get to the point that you start making connections and things start making sense one by one, you feel like that meme where all the colorful energy beams are radiating out of your head. Big work, big payoff.
I'm getting to that point in german, everything's just going swell, to the point where everything's clicking together like a lego set, it's really great, I may not have a large vocabulary, but when I hear it, it's like my brain just goes "Oh shit! Let me get out my dictionary", and I hope my russian becomes atleast that good,
I hope my russian becomes atleast that good,
It will! Just keep at it. :)
About 9 months in (I was hyperfocused and had a lot of free time to study) I just started having a series of lightbulb moments where I went "Oh! So that's why it is the way it is!"
I think I'm at maybe 2.5, 3 months? And I'd like to think some dots are connecting, 🫠🤞
Absolutely they are! Just my personal experience was having a cascade of them at about 9 months in. But your astute mind is probably finding these connections even more quickly than I did! You do, after all, have prior experience in language learning with German. :)
Yeah well english is easy as fuck😂 but me, if something seems complicated in russian and i get confused im thinking through how that particular thing works in hungarian (because i learn russian as english “native” from internet) and i realize like yeah it is not bad
My kid speaks Russian and English and studied French for years, French is very very hard. Better learn Spanish, it will be faster and a lot less frustrating.
I want to learn French because I think it's in need at the Defense Language Institute, I think French is tier one and Spanish is tier 2.
That emoji is exactly how I feel on this topic
Every time I have to read something with a number aloud for my Russian teacher, I pause and look at her and she just gives me a look like "I know it's chaos, just guess." I get it right about 50% of the time, which I'm honestly proud of. Instrumental case of numbers IS BAD.
I haven't even made it to the instrumental case, you just put the fear of God in me, I'm self teaching myself 😥
I highly, HIGHLY recommend finding a teacher in person or online who you can speak with, because it's so, so easy to make mistakes and it's really hard to catch them unless someone is able to correct you. Even just finding a conversation partner who's a native speaker will help you tremendously. You don't want to develop bad habits, because they'll be much harder to fix than if you just learn everything correctly to start with.
- Only numbers 1-2 (as well as 21-22, 31-32, etc, 101-102 etc) decline by gender.
- All numbers decline by case.
Also note that, in additional to ordinal and cardinal numbers, Russian also has collective numbers (e.g. двое, трое, четверо etc). Collective numbers have no counterpart in English, and apply only to masculine animate nouns and pair nouns.
Wow, so the phrases "четверо парней" and "четыре девушки" have different parts of speech indicating number?
Not parts of speech, but different grammatical features: четыре парня vs четверо парней.
Collective number: A numeral that signifies that several persons or things are taken definitely and unitedly together, in the sense of—both, all three, all four, etc.
Isn't there a rule that you can't say "четыре парня"? I'm native but this is pretty obscure. I know that "четверо девушек" is technically incorrect, but I can say that and I believe a lot of other natives can too.
I also once stumbled upon the sentence "За три года я пригласил в гости четырех друзей", and it felt like "четырех" implies they didn't all come together; if they did, it would be "четверых". But again, I don't know any rules about it and I'm not sure if it's correct.
MGU Russian says that both forms are acceptable but carry a slighly different meaning:
Вопрос: Помогите объяснить разницу между «там стоят два мужчины», «двое мужчин зашли» и «двое мужчин зашло». Спасибо!
Ответ: Оба варианта написания и произношения являются правильными, но в литературном языке существует разграничение употребления того или иного слова. «Два» — количественное числительное, «двое» — собирательное числительное.
Есть случаи, когда можно сказать и так, и этак: два друга и двое друзей. В первом словосочетании смысловой акцент – на личностях, это два конкретных человека, которые дружат, во втором – скорее на том, что их объединяет.
Не рекомендуется употреблять собирательные числительные, если речь идет о людях, занимающих относительно высокое положение. Например, на кафедре может быть два профессора (но не двое профессоров), а в каком-нибудь воинском подразделении – три генерала (но не трое генералов). Количественные числительные и в этом случае позволяют сделать акцент на личности, на ее достижениях, а собирательные – «понижают статус» соответствующего лица (ср. двое преподавателей, трое военных – здесь акцент скорее на социальной группе).
В живом русском языке эти правила часто игнорируются, поэтому в основном применяется более благозвучный вариант.
The Penguin Russian Course (book) has a great chapter on this. If you can part with $15 or so, I can't recommend it highly enough.
There's a website I've been using to get a better grasp on russian cases, and it recommends that exact same book, I've heard only good things about it, where can I find it?
it's a great book, and you can find it on Amazon etc
Ah, thanks a bunch.
"Один" и "два" used as quantities need to agree with their respective subject's (or object's) gender - "один хулиган", "одна девушка", "одному хулигану", "одной девушке".
All quantities that end in один и два will also need to agree with their respective subject - "пятьдесят один ключ", "тридцать две стрелы".
Other numbers when used as an object have their own genders that can be generally guessed from their ending and will affect their "quantity" number when they act as a subject - "один миллион", "одна тысяча", "одним миллионом", "одной тысячей". At the same time, some numbers have a separate noun form that's also gendered "сто" - "сотня", "десять" - "десяток" and if they're used with other quantitative descriptors, will need similar agreement: "две сотни", "один десяток" (not "два сто", "один десять").
Whether a number needs to agree with a subject's gender or not... it will become the subject or object and take on the appropriate case, while the former object/subject takes adjectival form dictated by the number: "Три топора рубили лес" - notice that "три" is nominative now, and "топора" is accusative, "Он раздал хлеб миллиону человек" - "миллиону" is dative here while "человек" is accusative (don't ask, can't explain this word), "Они засевали поле десятью сеялками" - both "десятью" and "сеялками" are instrumental. I can't point you to a proper table of which case of number takes which case of subject/object, though. Maybe someone here knows a good source.
Edit:
And of course I forgot about the numerals. These need to agree on gender and case with the subject/object: "Первое собрание", "первым встречным", "четвёртой дочери", "четвёртому знакомцу"... You get the idea.
Somehow all commenters above have forgotten to mention полтора = “one and a half”, which has the feminine variant полторы. And if you count “both” as a numeral, it also has gendered variants: masc./neut. оба vs. fem. обе — and, unlike in два / две, the disinction is preseved in all cases (обоих vs. обеих, etc.)
Well, thousand is F (dozen is also F) while million/billion etc are M.
And all the xty-one, xty-two, have the same declension as 1 and 2
So you will have any multiple of those as, два миллиона (одна) тысяча сорок одно куриное яйцо.
don't forget, один конь, 2-3-4 коня, 5-20 коней, 21 конь, 22-24 коня, and so on.
I know it was about something maybe confusing about Russian, but you just made me realize that it is just like my on language (portuguese). We will have gendered one (um/uma) and two (dois/duas) them from three up there is no difference. I was confuse about it before and you helped me😂
Whoops, well I'm glad I helped, 😂
It's funny how many different interpretations of the question there are in these comments.
I believe OP is asking how many numbers there are in Russian that are declined specifically based on the gender of the noun that follows. And the answer to that question is just "один" and "два", and by extension all numbers that end with either "один" or "два".
Of course there are still other ways in which grammatical gender can intersect with numbers, such as "тысяча" being a feminine noun. But that's not the same thing, since "тысяча" is always feminine and declines like a feminine noun unto itself — it doesn't decline based on the noun that is being counted.
I think some people are misunderstanding the question and giving needlessly complicated answers.
The word for thousand, don’t feel like switching keyboards
Тысяча мужчин (м.р.)
Тысяча женщин (ж.р.)
Тысяча колёс (с.р.)
It doesn't change depending on the noun's gender. I think this is what OP meant
It’s a gendered language lol. All nouns have gender.
Thank you, 😞
Like один, одна and одно, два and две, please don't tell me all numbers have genders
Strictly speaking, numbers don't have genders, nor do numerals. Numbers are not nouns, for example you can't say "я вижу один" unless the noun is implied from prior context. Only nouns and a few pronouns have built-in genders. However, most numerals decline according to the gender of the corresponsing noun. In particular, cardinal numerals один and два and any number above 20 that ends in один or два decline according to the gender of the noun they refer to. Ordinal numerals all decline like adjectives, so according to the gender among other things.
And people say Russian can't into gender
Wait until you hear about год, года and лет)))
Один — одна, одно.
Два — две.
Полтора — полторы.
Оба — обе
The others do not change. What you are asking about is quantitive numerals and how they change with nouns.
There are also ordinal numerals.
Одно окно, одна ручка, один подоконник.
Два окна, две ручки, два подоконника.
Три окна, три ручки, три подоконника.
Четыре окна, четыре ручки, четыре подоконника.
Пять окон, пять ручек, пять подоконников.
Шесть, семь, восемь, девять, десять, одиннадцать, двенадцать, тринадцать итд - так же как пять.
И те же правила, когда прибавляются десятки, сотни итд. Сто одно окно, две тысячи две ручки, три миллиона три подоконника.
Only 1 and 2 have genders To ex-ple: один день одна ночь. This rule works for every number that ends with 1 or 2. Двадцать один год, тридцать две вещи
Ноль девушек, ноль парней (sounds icky, but for instance, it’s a colloquial) Одна девушка, один парень Две девушки, два парня Три девушки, три парня Четыре девушки, четыре паря Пять девушек, пять парней Шесть девушек, шесть парней Семь девушек, семь парней Восемь девушек, восемь парней Девять девушек, девять парней Десять девушек, десять парней Двадцать, тридцать… сто… тысяча, миллион — the same
I don't get it: you ask a question and then implore that we not tell you the answer.
It was sarcasm, like "please tell me this WONT be a pain in my ass", sorry man, not conveyed well over writing 😅
Ahhh, I get it🤣
My bad, 😂
yees only 1 and 2 (and also compound numerals that end in 1 or 2) have a gender. it happens because historically numerals 1 and 2 were adjectives and another numerals were substantives, so 1 and 2 are able to coordinate with gender (btw 1 is crazy because it also has a plural form). in fact, numerals in russian are strange and inhomogeneous, so even if russian is your native language it is so hard to explore this part of speech
Thank you so much, 🫠
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27d
what about spanish my big brained comrade?)
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SMH
Bro, it's about grammar. I'm not putting in the effort to dumb down the concept for you.
Funnily enough I think it is only for один and два exactly, три is already not being gendered. Do not take my words for truth however, I'm saying this off the top of my head