this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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Is it done in Russian by prefixes or suffixes or something else, or do they just not have that form for nouns?
There's no prefix, so when "the" is used for emphasis it's completely lost in translation. "The Great Gatsby" is just "Великий Гэтсби". Though that little ий hides the same complexity as german as it implies male and that this is used in a sentence just to name something. If Gatsby was female it'd be "Великая Гэтсби", and if it was something ungendered, like a place somewhere, itd be "Великое Гэтсби". And on that part about placement in the sentence, it could be something like [an achievement of] Великого(male) / Великой(female) Gatsby, like when talking about belongings or actions of someone; Or [I gave something to] Великому/Великой, and a few orhers. As you can see there are duplocates and ambiguities. Add present/past/future tenses to the mix and it becomes a complete mess.
So it's done by suffixes. Okay cool, thank you for explaining! 🙏
Except that's all gender rather than the article function (distinguishing if something is specific or generic). A language without articles doesn't distinguish between "get in the car" and "get in a car" and instead rely on the person listening to know whether there's a specific car to get into
I see, yeah. So Russian doesn't have article, but only genders, is what you're saying?