In Bulgarian there are three grammatical genders of the noun - masculine, feminine and neuter.
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I. Masculine
Nouns that end in consonant are usually masculine:
мъж (man)
град (city/town)
брат (brother)
език (language/tongue)
Exceptions:
All nouns that mean male persons are masculine, regardless of their ending:
1.Nouns that end in -a – баща (father).
2.Nouns that end in -я – съдия (judge).
3.Nouns that end in -o – татко (dad), дядо (grandfather), чичо (uncle).
4.Nouns that end in -e – аташе (doesnt mean anything in english ).
Some nouns that end in -и are also masculine – for example – the names of the months – януари (January), февруари (February), etc., because the word месец (month) is masculine.
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II. Feminine
Nouns that end in the vowels -a or -я are usually feminine:
жена (woman)
бира (beer)
земя (earth)
стая (room)
идея (idea)
Exceptions:
Some nouns that end in consonants are feminine (usually abstract nouns) - вечер (evening), пролет (spring), младост (youth), радост (joy),любов (love),песен(song),нощ(night).
A clue: Usually words containing more than one syllable and ending in -ост are feminine.
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III.Neuter
1.Nouns that end in -o are usually neuter - село (village), дърво (tree), писмо (letter).
2. Nouns that end in -e are usually neuter - дете (child), море (sea), училище (school)
3.Some nouns that end in -и, -у, -ю (usually foreign words in Bulgarian language) are also neuter - такси (taxi), бижу (jewel), меню (menu).
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!!! Bulgarians usually determine the gender of foreign words or names phonetically!!!
For example, to order a beer in a restaurant you have to say:
Една бира, моля (one beer please), using the feminine form of the number one (Scroll up to see numbers ), because the word beer in Bulgarian is in feminine gender. If you want to order a particular trade mark it should be:
Една Каменица – feminine, because the word Kamenitza (Bulgarian trade mark) ends in 'a'
Една Стела Артоа – feminine, because the word Stella ends in 'a'
Един Хайнекен – masculine, because the word Heineken ends in consonant, etc.
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To summarize:
In Bulgarian every noun has its gender. The idea that nouns have gender seems perfectly natural when the noun stands for a living creature.
Words like мъж (man), баща (father) and чичо (uncle) are masculine and words like жена (woman), майка (mother) and леля (aunt) are feminine.
......Unfortunately in the majority of the cases there is no way to predict the gender of the noun, using as a clue its meaning.
For example the words of neuter gender are not only objects or animals. Words like момиче (girl), момче (boy), дете (child) are neuter gender.
At the same time маса (table) is feminine and стол (chair) is masculine.
So, the gender of every word you learn has to be memorized!!!!