Anonymous asked: How can you tell if a lifeless thing in Hindi, like pen or house, is masculine or feminine?

नमस्ते namaste and thanks for the question! This is a wonderful question actually, I’m really glad you’ve asked it. How do you know whether a random Hindi noun is masculine or feminine?  The unfortunate truth is you don’t know until you learn the gender of the word. For some words this is very easy…

The word आदमी aadmee - Man is masculine, and the word औरत aurat - Woman is feminine. But for other words, like you ask in your question, there’s really nothing to help you, it seems completely random! You simply have to learn the gender of new words as you learn the word. घर ghar - House and क़लम kalam - Pen are both Masculine in case you didn’t know. 

Don’t forget that it is very important for you to know the gender of every single word you learn, otherwise your sentences will not be grammatically correct!

You can read loads more about this over in Lesson #38, that lesson explains this concept in much more detail, giving you plenty more example too! I hope that helps. As always be sure to ask if you have any more questions. 

Click here to ask a question or to leave any comments or suggestions.