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In all languages with genders I know the word for man is masculine, and the word for women is feminine. While this is still technically true for the word мужчина, it is the only Russian masculine word I know that declines like a feminine word ending in "a". Can anyone give a historical reason why this is the case?

shabunc
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Adrian Clough
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    here its etymology is being explained, quite vague http://slovari.ru/default.aspx?s=0&p=5311&0a0=181 – Баян Купи-ка Oct 16 '16 at 18:42
  • Edit: I have specified that мужчина, it is the only Russian masculine word I know that declines like a feminine word ending in "a". – Adrian Clough Oct 16 '16 at 20:38
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    downvoting cause it's a valid though very poor quality question, your assumption is wrong, it's not the only noun. – shabunc Oct 16 '16 at 20:47
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    @shabunc The OP does not say it's the only word, he says it's the only word he knows. – Abakan Oct 16 '16 at 21:06
  • @Abakan true, but for me it's then an evidence of lack of investigation beforehand. – shabunc Oct 16 '16 at 21:10
  • @shabunc So what would change if the question body would consist only of the question title without any further text? It's a valid question. – Abakan Oct 16 '16 at 21:13
  • @Abakan that's what I've stated as well, it's valid. – shabunc Oct 16 '16 at 21:32
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    There is a category of masculine nouns ending with -а: "I склонение — имена существительные женского, мужского и общего рода, имеющие в именительном падеже единственного числа окончание -а (-я) (страна, земля, армия, голова, дядя, юноша, Петя, плакса, соня, задира)." As for nouns for family members - папа, батя, дядя. Even diminutive names are full of -a endings: Вова, Миша, Гриша, etc. – Artemix Oct 17 '16 at 07:23
  • @Artemix your comment should be an answer – Pavel Mayorov Oct 17 '16 at 08:10

5 Answers5

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It doesn't decline like a feminine noun. It declines like a noun of the first declension, which includes both masculine and feminine nouns ending in -а or -я. Examples of first declension masculine nouns are возница, старшина, дядя, папа, юноша.

Lara
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Dima
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Not all words in Russian ending with -a are feminine, so the question is quite incorrect. When we use any definition, like "clever", there appears masculine ending -ый, that shows we talk of a masculine: умный мужчина, while it would be -ая for femine: умная женщина. The suffix -ина appears both in feminine and masculine words, masculine words like детина, мужчина were often used in conversational dialect, showing the brutality and big size of the matter :) In many dialects мужчина was used for rustics. Here is some information: http://wordhist.narod.ru/genshina.html

Seyrios
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    Тут участник попросту путает понятия "женский род" и "первое склонение" - а вы ему рассказываете про диалекты. Зачем вы так? – Pavel Mayorov Oct 17 '16 at 08:17
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Because they have the same origin (from abstract words). This word is not a single example of nouns ending with -а belonging to the masculine gender. But it is interesting that it appeared rather late and in Old Russian we had муж(see Фасмер ). I will try to translate the essential part of that interesting article. The word мужчина originated from the noun with generalized meaning мужьщина, formed from the adjective мужьскъ with the suffix -ина; Compare: женщина, деревенщина etc. (Соболевский, Лекции, с. 111). The word came into being not earlier than XV — XVI centuries. It was not mentioned in the book («Материалы для словаря древнерусского языка» И. И. Срезневский.) А. А. Потебня used this word to illustrate the change in the meaning (general--collective --individual ).
Thus, мужьчина meant the quality of the person who was мужьскъ (manly ). (Потебня, Из зап. по русск. грам., 3, с. 33).

«Д. И. Буслаев and А. А. Потебня ...analysed the reasons of transition of general, abstract or collective nouns into those denoting a person (like слуга, служба, простота, старина, мужчина и т. п.) showing how words of common gender (ending with -a) developed (Виноградов. Русск. язык, с. 67).

V.V.
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  • Тут участник попросту путает понятия "женский род" и "первое склонение" - а вы ему рассказываете про этимологию. Зачем вы так? – Pavel Mayorov Oct 17 '16 at 08:17
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    Не только ему, я считаю, это интересно. Но, очевидно, не всем, простите. Вы как-то узко понимаете цель сайта. – V.V. Oct 17 '16 at 08:46
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it is the only Russian word I know that declines like a feminine word ending in "a"

Дядя, юноша, мальчишка etc. There are also many words which can be both masculine and feminine, e.g. судья, забияка, сквалыга, размазня and so on.

So the question is ill-formed.

Matt
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