Genders

Welsh General / Questions
1

Hi everyone

This has probably been asked before, but is there an easy way to learn whether something is masculine or feminine?

Struggling a bit with this, for example, do I use ‘o’ or ‘hi’ etc..

Sorry if this is a bit vague!

Thanks

2

A tip I was given early on was to learn the noun along with the word ‘two’. Masculine nouns will always be dau xxxxx and feminine ones will be dwy xxxxx.
So when you want to learn a noun of a known gender, rather than think “ci = masculine, cath = feminine”, think “dau gi, dwy gath”.

However, that only works when you know the gender of the noun beforehand. Recognising the gender of a noun is a whole other ball game, and whilst there are a few ‘tricks’ that appear to give you a rule, there are often exceptions to those ‘rules’.

I think I read somewhere that there are in general more masculine nouns than feminine ones so, when all else fails, defaulting to masculine can be a safety net.

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