GENDER AID is a unique feature to Russian Spell Check. It analyses nouns to find out whether they are masculine, feminine or neautral.
The student of the Russian language quickly learns to recognize the basic gender of nouns. Masculine nouns most often end with a consonant, like ‚Ó‰ÓÔ‡‰, ÒÚÓÎ, ‰ÓÏ.
Neutral nouns usually end with either Ó or Â. For example ÓÍÌÓ, ÏÓÂ, ÍÓÎÂÒÓ but there are some neutral nouns that end with fl - like ‚ÂÏfl, Á̇Ïfl.
3/4 of all feminine nouns end with the soft sign
Feminine nouns are recognized by the ending vowels ‡ and fl. But they also may end with the soft sign ( ¸ ). As a matter of fact, 3/4 of all nouns ending with the soft sign are feminine.
But what about the remaining 1/4? They are masculine. Here the student has to learn the gender of each word. It seems like an impossible task to master all these for the newcomer to the Russian language.
Even after years of studies, this is still a problem. There are many nouns that end with the soft sign. But, fortunately, there are rules that will make it easier for the student.
Russian Spell Check
has all of these rules built-in !
Yes, it is true. Finally, there is a lazy solution for the student/writer. Simply press the GENDER AID button - during SPELL CHECKING or GRAMMAR CHECKING - and remarkable as it may seem, You receive the gender of the noun INSTANTLY.
The rules are not covering all words ending with the soft sign. The remaining nouns has to be learned, but the student will be impressed by the powerful help that is obtainable by GENDER AID.
A part of the rules, says that all birds and insects ending with the soft sign - with a few exceptions - are masculine. However, as I do not have - neither a Russian bird reference guide book, nor a Russian insect reference book - most of these birds and insects are not included in this version (2.77). But, a future version will include many, many more.
By the way, You must register to use GENDER AID.
GENDER AID RECOGNITION COVERAGE
GENDER AID does not only find the gender of nouns, but also detects the occurance
of different types of words. Take a look at the list below:
1 masculine nouns
2 feminine nouns
3 neutral nouns
4 prepositions
5 some verbs
6 adverbs
7 interjections
8 particles
9 conjunctions
10 numerals
11 some adjectives
This is especially helpful for GRAMMAR CHECK, as this aid substantially cuts the
amount of potential errors that the program made previously.