Gender of Russian loan words

[Annie Burke]

Sorry for such a quick follow-up - I figured out what was going on with
those three particular words but still would be very interested in any
general information about the way noun gender changes over time from any
readers!

Thanks,

Annie

2009/5/10 Annie Burke <annis.f.burke at gmail.com>

> Hello Seelangtsy!
>
> I've been a seelangs subscriber for some time but only recently came
> across a question worthy of your collective wisdom. I studied Russian
> in college and have spent enough time in Russia to speak the language
> fairly well, and have taken it upon myself to teach a friend of mine.
> We were going over gender of nouns this afternoon, and read in our
> Pulkina textbook from the 80s or 90s that loan words are neuter. But
> then he started asking whether words like музей, библиотека, альбом,
> etc. are neuter. I thought no, of course not! But when I looked in my
> dictionary I found that they were! However, a search on rambler.ru
> says that they are masculine, feminine and masculine, respectively. My
> suspicion is that two decades ago such words were loan-ey enough to be
> neuter, but now, especially with globalization gone wild, such words
> have been sufficiently adopted to take on what seem like more logical
> genders.
>
> Does anybody out there have any more detailed information about this
> type of gender transition? This seems like a pretty massive change in
> grammar to happen over the fewer than 15 years that has passed since
> my dictionary (Katzner) was published!
>
> Spasibo bol'shoe,
>
> Annie
>

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