Foreign language indeclinable words. Indeclinable nouns. Declension of nouns

Declension is a change in cases and numbers of nouns. There are three. In addition, there are indeclinable (ten nouns of the gender gender that end in -mya, as well as the words daughter, way, mother, child) and indeclinable nouns (foyer, metro, cafe, radio, show).

Indeclinable nouns are called, which in all cases have the same form: I see a coat (v.p.), I admire a coat (e.g.).

1) words borrowed from other languages ​​that end in a vowel and denote inanimate objects: cocoa, depot, coat, movie, purse, aloe, taxi, coffee.

2) from other languages ​​that call male and female representatives and end in a vowel: dandy, attache, impresario, lady.

3) words borrowed from other languages ​​denoting animals: kangaroo, chimpanzee, cockatoo;

4) and female surnames that end in a solid consonant: Carmen, Helen, Miss, Madam, Finkelstein;

5) foreign words that call geographic features: Helsinki, Baku, Calais, Toronto.

6. Russian surnames that are a form genitive units and many others. numbers: Durnovo, Khitrovo, Polish, Kruchenykh.

7. Ukrainian surnames with -ko: Korolenko, Franko, Shevchenko, Oleshko;

8) abbreviations are also indeclinable nouns, examples: Germany, Moscow State University, UN, RF, USA.

When combining indeclinable nouns with others, their case can be determined by the construction of the entire sentence (for example, There was an old dressing table in the hall (im. p.), Or by the endings of adjectives that are consistent with these indeclinable nouns: Maxim wrapped his neck in a warm scarf (tv. P)

Inanimate indeclinable nouns are mostly neuter: sweet popsicle, woolen scarf, scheduled interview, metropolitan subway. The indeclinable noun coffee (black) is masculine, while avenue and kohlrabi are feminine.

Animated borrowed nouns are classified as well. r., if they name females (frau, madam, miss, lady), and m.r., if they name animals and males (chimpanzee, entertainer, dandy, attaché, cockatoo).

Gender of indeclinable nouns that denote names geographical objects, determine the gender of those common nouns that can replace these names: Gaborone (city) - an indeclinable masculine noun, Missouri (river) - female;

The genus of compound words and abbreviations is most often determined by the genus of the main (reference) word when deciphering: exercise therapy - physiotherapy- feminine, since the main word is feminine; KGB - State Security Committee - masculine, since the main word is masculine; BelAZ - (Belarusian car factory) - masculine, since the main word is masculine, etc.

Since indeclinable nouns are borrowed from other languages, their spelling should be checked in spelling dictionaries.

Words for inanimate objects. Indeclinable nouns of foreign origin, denoting inanimate objects, for the most part belong to the middle gender, for example: railway depot, interesting interview, fixed-route taxi, political status quo, healing aloe, wool scarf.

The rule has a number of exceptions related to the influence of various analogies (Russian synonym, grammatical gender of a word denoting a generic concept, etc.).

So, the masculine gender includes the words: ha (cf .: one ha, the influence of the word hectare), coffee (the influence of the masculine gender of this word in French from which it was borrowed, and in connection with this, the existence former forms coffee, coffee), poppies (thicket), penalty (influence of the Russian synonymous combination "penalty kick"), sirocco, tornado (generic concept "wind"), suluguni (generic concept "cheese"), shimmy (generic concept "dance" ), ecu (an old French coin; the influence of the source language), and some others. Under the influence of the word-concept "language", the words of Bengali, Pashto, Suomi, Urdu, Hindi, etc., belong to the masculine gender.

The feminine gender includes the words: avenue (Russian synonym for street), bere (generic concept of “pear”), beriberi (generic concept of “disease”), kohlrabi (“cabbage”), salami (“sausage”) and some others.

Finally, some words are used in the form of two genders, for example: auto (middle and male, influenced by the word car), afghani (among and female), bibabd (middle and male, compare: small bibabo), brandy (among, and masculine, cf.: strong brandy), mocha beredi, and masculine, analogy with the use of the word coffee), nargile (among, and masculine, a close concept of "hookah"), pas de deux and pas de trois (Middle and masculine, generic term "dance"), Cicero (Middle and masculine, generic "typeface"), Esperanto (Middle masculine, influence of the word language, see above) ; there are words that are simultaneously used in any of the genders and the plural, for example, blinds (middle and plural; cf .: beautiful blinds). 2.

substantiated words. Substantivized indeclinable words belong to the middle gender, for example: polite “hello”, always “yes”, loud “threat, our tomorrow, sharp “I don’t want to”. 3.

Words for persons. Indeclinable nouns, denoting persons, are masculine or feminine depending on their meaning, i.e., correlation with the real gender of the designated person, for example:

1) masculine gender: rentier, military attache, coolie, duce, curé, referee, maestro, Nazi, Quasimodo, Yankee, Chevalier, bullfighter, impresario, caballero, pierro; 2)

feminine: fraulein, ingenue, travesty, miss, lady, nude, pani, madam, milady; 3)

two-kind: counterpart (cf .: my counterpart turned out to be an interesting interlocutor - my counterpart turned out to be an interesting interlocutor), protégé (cf.: our protégé lived up to all hopes - our protégé justified all hopes); incognito (cf .: the mysterious incognito suddenly disappeared - the mysterious incognito suddenly disappeared); hippie (cf.: young hippie sang - young hippie sang); 4)

neuter: jury (in the collective sense; cf.: the jury ruled). 4.

Words denoting animals, birds, etc. indeclinable nouns denoting animate objects (except for faces, see below).

Above), refer to the masculine gender, for example: zebu, pony, chimpanzee, cockatoo, kangaroo, flamingo, macao, rhea, koala, gray. In this case, the masculine gender is used regardless of the sex of the animal. However, if the context indicates a female, then the corresponding words are used in the feminine form, for example: a kangaroo carried a kangaroo in a bag, a chimpanzee fed a cub.

The words collie, grizzly are bigeneric (middle and

geographical names. The gender of indeclinable nouns denoting geographic proper names (names of cities, rivers, lakes, islands, mountains, etc.) is determined by the grammatical gender of the common noun, which acts as a generic concept (i.e., by the gender of the words city, river, lake, etc.), for example: sunny Tbilisi (city), wide Mississippi (river), full-flowing Erie (lake), hard-to-reach Jungfrau (mountain), picturesque Capri (island).

Deviations from the rules are explained by the influence of analogy, the use of the word in a different meaning, the tendency to refer to the middle gender non-inflected words in -o, etc. Second Baku (the name of the oil production site, not the city), Novye Sochi (false analogy with words in the plural form like Velikiye Luki).

Sometimes the same word is used in different generic forms depending on what concept is meant. Compare: during the crisis, Somalia suffered from food shortages. - Somalia accepted with gratitude humanitarian aid(in the first case, the concept of "state" is meant, in the second - "country"), 6.

Names of funds mass media. The grammatical gender of indeclinable media names is also determined by the generic name, for example: BBC reported (British Broadcasting Corporation); liberal News Chronicle. Often there is an erroneous agreement: the BBC reported (as an indeclinable neuter noun), The Times published ... (the name with a final consonant is assigned to the masculine gender), Burda fashion showed a new summer collection of clothes (name of the magazine) .

7. Abbreviations. Abbreviations formed by combining the initial letters of those words that make up the full name determine their grammatical gender according to the gender of the leading word of the compound name, for example: MGU (Moscow State University) celebrated its bicentennial; ATS (automatic telephone exchange) has increased the number of subscribers. Sometimes other agreement is also allowed, for example: ITAR-TASS reported ... (an abbreviation with a final consonant is assigned to the masculine gender).

The same provision applies to complex abbreviated words (read by initial sounds or including syllabic formations), if these words are not declined, for example: local selpo (rural consumer society).

In Russian, there is a class of nouns that does not change by case. You can learn about indeclinable nouns, what words refer to them, their features, in this article. In addition, the material contains a lot of examples of indeclinable nouns.

What are inflected nouns?

Indeclinable nouns- a class of nouns that do not change in cases, and form a special zero declension of an unproductive type. Indeclinable nouns include:

• Common and proper nouns of foreign origin in -o, -e, -u, -yu, -i, -a;
• Compound words and abbreviations;
• Slavic surnames on -o, -s (-s), -ago (‑yago), -ovo.

Examples of indeclinable nouns Key words: credo, Oslo, meringue, Heine, interview, jury, Sochi, Dali, role, UN, CIS, warehouse manager, Kovalenko, Orlovsky, Belykh, Zhivago, Khitrovo.

Invariable nouns are studied by schoolchildren in the 6th grade.

Features of indeclinable nouns

The system of case forms of indeclinable nouns consists of homonymous forms with zero ending. Invariable nouns do not have number, gender, or case forms, and their grammatical meaning expressed syntagmatically (according to the grammatical features of words with which indeclinable nouns agree in phrases and sentences).

Examples: black coffee cooled down (I. p.), go to Tokyo(V. p.), conclude bet(V. p), talk about Italian baroque(P. p.).

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Declension is a change in cases. Declinable nouns are divided into three types (declension): l dec., ll dec. and ll cl. There are also various nouns (name, time, burden, banner, udder, tribe, flame, stirrup, seed, crown, daughter, path, child and mother).

Indeclinable Nouns: Definition and Examples

Zero declension nouns include:

1. Words of foreign origin that name inanimate objects and end in a vowel: canoe, subway, foyer, cinema, cafe, coat, purse, radio, taxi, cockatoo, interview, menu.

2. Words of foreign origin that name female and male persons and end in a vowel: attaché, dandy, referee, maestro, Hugo, lady, impresario, Nana, Shaw, Barto, Dumas, Verdi, Dode, Zola, Dante.

3. Indeclinable nouns are also represented by foreign words that denote animals: zebu, chimpanzee, pony, cockatoo, kangaroo, macao, flamingo, rhea, jaco, koala, jaco, macaque, cockatoo.

4. Foreign language female names and surnames that end in a hard consonant: Edith, Carmen, Aliger, Helen, Madame, Miss, Finkelstein, Schlegel.

5. Foreign names of geographical objects are also indeclinable nouns. Examples: Somalia, Toronto, Baku, Helsinki, Calais, Abu Dhabi, Batumi, Mississippi, Congo.

6. Russian old surnames ending in -ih, -ih -ovo and -ago, which are frozen forms of R. p. in the singular and in plural. Zhivago, Khitrovo, Durnovo, Polish, Long, Twisted.

7. Indeclinable nouns are also surnames like Nightingale, Strizh, Kovalchuk.

8. Ukrainian surnames in -enko, -ko: Oleshko, Franko, Tsekalo, Nesterenko, Cheshko, Shevchenko, Korolenko, Makarenko.

9. Abbreviations: UN, Moscow State University, USA, Russian Federation, NPP, USSR, ITAR-TASS, ATS, head of department, head of base.

Indeclinable nouns are always presented unchanged: warm coat; put on a coat; rejoice coat; be proud of a coat, think about a coat, not have a coat, etc. The grammatical features of such words (case, number, gender, animation or inanimateness) appear only in a phrase or sentence.

By using indeclinable names nouns in speech (in a phrase, in a sentence) one must be able to determine their gender in order to correctly coordinate adjectives and verbs of the past tense with them. There are specific rules for determining the gender of such nouns. In case of doubt, you can look it up in dictionaries.