MichaelW157
May 7, 2022
Is “Square” in Russian a masculine or feminine noun?
I saw the words “Red Square” which was transliterated as “Krashnaya (Red/feminine adjective) ”Plowshat" (Square/ masc/fem?).
I thought from the spelling of Square (Plowshat) that it was a masculine noun but it can't be because they used a feminine adjective for Red (Krashnaya). So I am really confused as Plowshat sounds masculine to me. But it must be feminine. What am I doing wrong? Is it masculine or feminine? Thank you.
-Mike
Evgenia - Rocket Russian Tutor
May 9, 2022
Здравствуйте, MichaelW157
you are not doing anything wrong. The truth is, the soft sign doesn't tell you the gender of a word. Some words, like площадь (square), тетрадь (exercise book), кровать (bed) are feminine, whereas, other words, like рубль (ruble), Кремль (Kremlin), словарь (dictionary) are masculine.
Often adjectives help us to see the gender of such words, as adjectives always match nouns in gender, like in your example with Красная площадь. If we want to use the same colour to describe a dictionary, we'd say: красный словарь.