Palme School is on the line! We know that interesting facts about the Russian language attract the attention not only of scientists, but also of ordinary people. And today we will tell you about some of them - about words that have changed their gender.
It is not only people who change gender. In some languages, words can also change their gender over time.
Why does this happen? Philologists considerIt's a good thing that languages undergo a reverse evolution - they change from complex to simple. For example, in Old Russian there were as many as 5 declensions, while in modern Russian there are only three.
But back to the genus - why some words can have different endings, and sometimes two word forms at once. All because Russian is a living language and has about 300 million speakers all over the world. And everyone knows that only dead languages, such as Latin or Ancient Greek, do not change.
Today we will tell you about the history of 9 Russian words that have changed their genus. We have specially selected concepts that are known to children, and it will be interesting for you to read this article together.
SWAN
A native Russian word. Currently masculine, in the 19th century it was still used in the feminine gender. It is connected with ancient Slavic associations of this graceful bird with a young unmarried girl.
GIRAPH
Originally, the word had the ending -a and the feminine gender, because in Latin it sounds like this: "giraffa". But over time, the letter "a" was lost, and the word changed gender to masculine.
FILE
A word borrowed at the end of the 19th century from the English language when cinema began to spread. It was originally used in the feminine gender, "film", because it meant the film on which the first motion pictures were shot.
BOTINOC
A word borrowed in the middle of the 19th century from French (bottine). In the singular, it was originally used in the feminine form - "boot". However, over time it acquired the masculine gender and changed the ending.
SHOE
Another foreign word that came in the 17th century from German (tuffel) in the time of Peter the Great. Unlike shoe, on the contrary, it was used in the masculine gender - "shoe". And only in the 20th century it was fixed in dictionaries in the feminine form. Note that the accent in the word "shoe" falls on the first syllable
TAPKA/TAPOK
Another type of shoe with a controversial origin. The sources disagree about the origin, but one of the options is the Tatar word "tapi" - or "little foot". Perhaps slippers as a type of footwear was borrowed back in the days of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Nowadays, the masculine form of the word "slipper" is increasingly used. Therefore, some dictionaries allow both forms of the word - in the masculine and feminine gender.
COFFEE
As long as the word exists in the Russian language (and it is already more than 300 years old), there are so many disputes about its gender. So which is it - masculine or neuter? Back in tsarist Russia there were 2 variants of usage. By the way, the masculine gender was originally considered a literary norm, and the middle gender was considered a low style. In this form, "coffee" in the masculine gender has reached our days. Although there are still some attempts to legalize the middle gender.
PORTFEL
The word was borrowed from French and consists of two roots - "porte" and "feil". Literally means "carrying papers". Initially, the word was used in the feminine gender, like most Russian words ending in -l, but over time it changed its gender to masculine.
ROYAL
This model of piano dates back to the 19th century and is of French origin: "roi" means "king". The word was used in both the feminine and masculine genders. Eventually, in the 20th century, the masculine gender was finally established in dictionaries
Do you like learning interesting facts about the Russian language? Read our article on how to explain the meaning to your child of famous Russian phraseologisms
