Noun genders in Konkani
Nouns have one of three genders – neuter (N), feminine (F) and masculine (M). Noun genders are important because they dictate the forms of prepositions, adjectives and verbs in several tenses. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to determine the gender of a noun simply by how it sounds – specifically, the ending sound. The following table illustrates:
Gender |
Word endings |
Examples |
|---|---|---|
Neuter |
-a , -Anh 1 |
pustaka (book), ushshAnh (pillow) |
Feminine |
-i , -aa |
peskaati (knife), parikshaa (examination) |
Masculine |
-aw , -u |
ghawDaw (horse), rooku (tree) |
Words borrowed from English, if they don't end in a vowel sound, will usually have an -a appended and be treated as neuter nouns. For example, beer would become biyara , and bread would become breDDa .
A word such as family would be feminine as it ends in an -i sound (it would be transliterated as fAmili or fAmilee).
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