Most of those plural names are grammatically masculine, including Soedinënnye Štaty (United States), Ob”edinënnye Arabskie Èmiraty (United Arab Emirates), Komory (Comoros), Mal’divy (Maldives), Sejčel’skie Ostrova (Seychelles), Solomonovy Ostrova (Solomon Islands), and Maršallovy Ostrova (Marshall Islands). As for country names, French classifies some as masculine and others as feminine. Peru and Čili (Chile) are typically neuter when talking about the political entity, but feminine when talking about the physical country. I am often asked by my students why countries receive masculine or feminine names in languages that make a grammatical gender distinction. Yet when it comes to foreign toponyms ending in -i and –y, they pattern differently: those ending in -i are virtually never declined (e.g. A Guide to the Perplexed: How to Identify Pseudo-Linguistic Articles in the Media, Iran’s Nuclear Program—And the Possibility of a Military Strike, Who’s on First? 1976.). Opyt častotno-stilističeskogo slovarja variantov [Grammatical correctness of Russian speech. The gender of plural country names, such as Les États-Unis (United States) and Les Philippines (the Philippines) is determined by the singular: the former is masculine and the latter is feminine. All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy, Language, Thought, Culture: A Reassessment. As in French, the assignment of specific country names to gender categories depends on phonological form rather than on meaning. A few country names in French do not call for an article (this situation is much rarer in French than in English or German). Things to remember: As with majority of the French adjectives, there is a masculine and feminine form for most of the names of nationalities. Moreover, semantic counterparts (translations) between languages are often not assigned to the same gender: the word for ‘letter’ is masculine in German, feminine in French, and neuter in Russian; the word for ‘book’ is masculine in French, feminine in Russian, and neuter in German. Pp. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the gender affects both the selection of the article and the agreement on various other elements in the sentence. chez Dickens, dans l'œuvre de Dickens, dans Dickens, → a doctor rushed in and shouted: "Come quick". The case of i-final toponyms is interesting because both -i and –y in Russian are plural endings: compare knigi ‘books’ vs. žurnaly ‘magazines’ (the choice depends on the hardness/softness of the stem-final consonant). On the other end of the spectrum we have toponyms that never decline: these include names that end in -u (e.g. If you would like to receive updates of our newest posts, feel free to do so using any of your favorite methods below: If you have a great product or service you'd like to let our targeted audience know about, you can sponsor the development of this site with your promotion. A few country names, such as Soedinënnye Štaty (United States) and Filippiny (the Philippines), are grammatically plural. For example, why is Portugal masculine in French but feminine in Russian? J’habite au pays de Galles - I live in Wales. In Andrew Nevins & Asaf Bachrach (eds.) Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka. The article used with plural terms is the same in both genders, but predicative participles do show gender agreement with such terms in the form of an extra silent “e”. By the way, Šotlandija (Scotland) and Irlandija (Ireland) are both feminine, but Uèl’s (Wales) and Kornuol (Cornwall) are masculine. A more detailed map is reproduced on the left. The word you choose for the depends on whether the noun it is used with is masculine or feminine, singular or plural. L’Égypte (Egypt) is feminine, whereas L’Uruguay (Uruguay) is masculine. Is the Georgian language related to Basque, another European “outlier”? Declinable toponyms are assigned to a gender category in accordance with their declension pattern (which is, in turn, based on the ending): nouns ending in a hard consonant are generally masculine, those ending in -o or -e are neuter, those ending in -a are feminine, as are most of those ending in a soft consonant. Is there a geographical pattern to the gender assignment? Japanese place names in -a do not decline in Russian, except “Hiroshima”: this toponym was so frequently used during the Cold War that it became fully Russified and therefore declinable: v Osaka (in Osaka), v Sunagava (in Sunagawa), but v Xirosime (in Hiroshima). Conversely, why is China feminine in French but masculine in Russian? Exceptions include some Latin American place names that end in -os, as in v Fuèntos (in Fuentos), not v Fuèntose. As far as country names are concerned, the ending is of the utmost importance in determining its gender. Also close to the “indeclinable” end of the spectrum are foreign toponyms ending in -o  or -e. Such toponyms mostly remain unchanged, as in v Oslo (in Oslo), v Bordo (in Bordeaux), v Sorrento (in Sorrento), v Kale (in Calais). v Tbilisi, v Nagasaki, v Tripoli), while those ending in –y virtually always decline, replacing the -y by the appropriate case endings (e.g. (These figures are based on the statistics in Graudina et al. Filippiny (the Philippines) can be construed as either feminine or neuter. The pattern, however, is deceptive. I’ve been learning French for three years. The Wikipedia map reproduced on the left purports to show the distribution of “masculine” and “feminine” countries, shown in green and purple, respectively. Asian foreign toponyms, including country names, also tend not to be declined: v Bangladeš (in Bangladesh) is more common than v Bangladeše. Moreover, a phrase such as v gorode Vellington (without case ending on the toponym) is more than four times as common as one such as v gorode Vellingtone (with a case ending on the toponym). Similarly, Velikobritanija (Great Britain) is feminine, as is Anglija (England), a term often used informally for the whole UK. Here, the origin of the place name and its frequency of use in Russian play important roles. The issue of whether a given foreign toponym is declined, is much more complicated. v Afinax, in Athens; v Tatrax, in Tatra Mountains; v Kannax, in Cannes). Following the general gender assignment rules in Russian, these names are feminine: Francija (France), Čexija (Czech Republic), Indija (India). Oman also appears without an article but is masculine, possibly because the word le sultanat is masculine. Country. Inflectional Identity. Translation English - French Collins Dictionary. If they happen to end in -a or –ija, they will generally be feminine (e.g. (England is a feminine country in ‎French.) As most country names in German appear without an article, I will focus on the gender assignment in Russian toponyms. This map disregards, however, the fact that some country names are grammatically plural. But their informal designation, Kongo (Congo), is neuter. As for country names, French classifies some as masculine and others as feminine. When you’re saying you’re from put “je suis” (I am) in front of your nationality. On first glance, it does seem that Russian and French, at least, place many countries in the same categories. You often use the definite article with the name of school subjects, languages and sports. (In what follows, we shall see the forms of the locative case, which is naturally the most common case to be used with place names.) Some other country designations are even more tricky. What is the most difficult language to learn — and why? In general, gender assignment in Russian follows a complex algorithm that takes into account the natural sex (for people and sometimes animals), whether the noun is declinable, its phonological shape, and more. As a result, gender assignment (particularly, in a foreign language) “makes no sense”. As for French-derived place names in ‑a, those that have the (stressed) -a in French do not decline in Russian (v Spa), whereas those that end in a silent “e” in French and acquired an (unstressed) –a in Russian do decline: v Ženeve (in Geneva, in French: Genève), v Lozanne (in Lozanne), v Tuluze (in Toulouse). You can complete the translation of in given by the English-French Collins dictionary with other dictionaries such as: Wikipedia, Lexilogos, Larousse dictionary, Le Robert, Oxford, Grévisse, English-French dictionary : translate English words into French with online dictionaries. As can be seen, the gender assignment of country names is revealed by the choice of the article only in the case of place names that start from a consonant, are grammatically singular, and appear with an article in the first place. Foreign toponyms are almost twice as likely as their native Russian counterparts to be used in appositive construction without declension, where the actual toponym does not get the relevant case ending: a construction such as v gorode Vellington (literally ‘in city Wellington’, with no prepositional case ending on the toponym) is nearly twice as common as one such as v gorode Moskva (‘in city Moscow’). An experimental frequential stylistic dictionary of variants]. In contrast, Soedinënnoe korolevstvo (United Kingdom) is grammatically neuter. L'Angleterre (f) England: Le Royaume-Uni: United Kingdom: La Grande-Bretagne: Great Britain: La France: France: L'Allemagne (f) Germany: Les Pays-Bas (m) Netherlands: L'Espagne (f) Spain: Le Portugal: Portugal: