Module talk:ru-headword

Monosyllabic words with "ё"
A term such doesn't really belong to Category:Russian terms with irregular pronunciations but it has a manual adjustment (transliteration to remove the accent (ljod, not ljód) - the accent is not required, because it's monosyllabic but words with "ё" are normally stressed and the stress mark is not used over "ё". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:11, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There should be a way to tell the module not to categorize it Category:Russian terms with irregular pronunciations. For example by adding a parameter such as notrcat=. --WikiTiki89 04:14, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * On the headword? Yes, good idea. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You wanna do it yourself, or should I? --WikiTiki89 04:20, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You can do it, I am not very confident about it. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:23, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. --WikiTiki89 04:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Transliteration of inflected forms
Which edit made inflected forms in the headword transliterated? Is it here or Module:headword? I thought we agreed that only the entry name gets transliteration? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 03:56, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I made some changes to Module:headword to make the module more flexible in the future, but I didn't anticipate this. I've fixed it now. 04:12, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Diminutive forms - worth adding?
Is adding diminutive forms to Russian nouns a good idea? Russian is very rich in diminutives - they are often unpredictable (in their formation), used quite often and may have variants. I see Polish, Dutch, etc. nouns have them. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:32, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I would put them in the headword line, not in the inflection table. 00:36, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I meant. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * This module is only for inflection tables though. 00:43, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry. Moved --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:55, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think putting them in ====Derived terms==== is better, since there can be multiple different diminutives formed with different suffixes or with different vowels. --WikiTiki89 12:18, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

biaspectual verbs
I'd like to keep track of biaspectual verbs and I think it may be beneficial to have this category to users. How can I add a new type? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:47, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Isn't there already one? 08:37, 11 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have added today but Category:Russian biaspectual verbs needs a new catboiler. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 09:46, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You can add it to Module:category tree/poscatboiler/parts of speech/verbs. You can just copy the entry for imperfective or perfective verbs and adjust it as necessary. 11:46, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

biaspectual verbs 2
They can take alternative forms, such as "поприве́тствовать" - alternative perfective form of {[l|ru|приве́тствовать}}. It's quite common, especially with "-ировать" verbs, which are biaspectual, which may have alternative perfective forms, sometimes colloquial. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:05, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Non-mandatory superlative
Could you make superlative forms not mandatory for Russian adjectives, if a comparative is added, please? TIA. :) --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:57, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Does it not already work that way? Can you give an example? —CodeCat 23:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It's fixed now. —CodeCat 23:12, 12 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks! This may be too hard but every single comparative form (both adj. and adv.) ending in "-ее" has an alternative shortened, a more colloquial form "-ей" (with the same stress). Rather than adding "comp2=веселе́й", it would be great to automate it somehow or show a superscript message or something, e.g. весёлый/ве́село -> веселе́е, веселе́й. BTW, the majority of comparatives (for both adj. and adv.) are adverbs, except for comparatives having adjectival endings. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

stress marks on monosyllabic words
(moved from Talk:трель)

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think we agreed not to show stress marks on monosyllabic words in the headwords, only in the declension tables. Pls let me know if you could add it to your to-do list. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:00, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you're right. I'll add it to a to-do list for the noun module. Benwing2 (talk) 09:02, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It's done. Note that the accent is still present in the declension table title; if you want that removed, just let me know. Benwing2 (talk) 11:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I saw your edit. Yes, the stress mark in the table title should go too, if it's OK with you. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 11:24, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It's gone. Note that monosyllabic accents in multiword expressions such as кре́м для ру́к are kept, both in the headwords and the table titles. This is intentional, as not all words in such expressions may be stressed and so it's useful to have the stresses indicated (cf. also не́ зa что, ни за что́). Benwing2 (talk) 11:45, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Gender of ребята and other pluralia tantum in -ата/-ята, and presence of plural in headwords (from Talk:ребята)
(moved from Talk:ребята)

Could you help format this entry? Can ребята ever be masculine or only neuter? Is it only a plurale tantum or also the second plural of ребёнок in the meaning "boys, lads, comrades"? Is ребёнок masculine or neuter? Benwing2 (talk) 23:27, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Grammatically it's a plural. (It was also my recent discovery but it's correct). It refers to "boys" only or "children" in general (both boys and girls) but still a neuter. "ребёнок" is a masculine but it has an irregular plural, which is a neuter for its declension. See also девчата, which doesn't have a singular in modern standard Russian. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:35, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Would you say this is a plurale tantum or a plural of ребёнок? Benwing2 (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's better to have both with a slight difference in senses. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:44, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you check out the current version of this page and ребят? Benwing2 (talk) 23:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's still confusing. "ребя́та" is still nominative plural for the "child" sense, even if "дети" is a preferred plural for "ребёнок". For "guys", it's just genitive (pluralia tantum). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I thought I had it figured out, but I guess not. Is the current situation at ребёнок correct? If so, I'll fix up the plural forms appropriately. Benwing2 (talk) 05:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did my best to make it clearer. Admittedly, it was a bit misleading. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:55, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * You can't assume gender based on the declension, when direct evidence from pre-reform orthography directly contradicts it. Phrases like сусѣдніе ребята clearly show that this is a masculine plural, since the -іе adjectival ending is only used for masculine plurals. --WikiTiki89 15:50, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * See Talk:ребят. I asked Anatoli this exact question and he quoted an example from pre-reform orthography with adjectival -ыа. So maybe the gender was fluid? Benwing2 (talk) 17:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well he seems to be giving an example rather than quoting, and for a different word at that. And even for "котята", I am finding many examples of "молодые котята" in pre-reform books and only one of "молодыя котята". --WikiTiki89 18:16, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * What do you think? Are there any sources that weigh in on this? Benwing2 (talk) 18:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's not use the pre-reform spellings as the reason then. I did check some words in Google but got conflicting results. What does Zaliznyak say? I'll search for more info too. BTW, ruwiki uses neuter plurals and their declension tables are all based on Zaliznyak. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 20:27, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the key point is that they are the plurals of masculine nouns. Anyway, if it weren't for pre-reform orthography, we would have neither a basis on which to distinguish gender in plural nouns nor a reason to do so, and all plural nouns would just be genderless. Thus, I see nothing wrong with using pre-reform orthography as the source for these genders. --WikiTiki89 20:31, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we can't use pre-reform spellings as the source for gender in this case. We'll have to check some grammar references. (I've also searched for "добрыя ребята" + "въ" but "добрые" was more common). The reform happened because spelling rules were complicated and were often not followed or not understood and the gender of plural nouns has always been a grey area in Russian.--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 20:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The rules were followed. The reform happened because the rules were difficult and not always clear and they were often followed inconsistently, but overall they were definitely followed, and this rule was certainly followed. Try searching for obviously neuter nouns and you will see that they consistently use -ыя. --WikiTiki89 21:15, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's the point. The gender of -ата/-ята nouns is not obvious or assumed incorrectly. I didn't have a chance to look for the grammar references yet but I don't object to some plural forms to be genderless, especially when some are hard to detect. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * And my point is that whatever it was assumed to be then is the real gender. There is no "correct" gender other than what is used and in modern usage, the gender is indistinguishable and irrelevant. Therefore, the last time that the gender mattered was in pre-reform orthography, and there these words were treated as masculine plurals, even this treatment was not etymologically correct. And etymological correctness is irrelevant. What a grammar books says would also be irrelevant. And like I said, the real most important point is that these are plurals of masculine nouns, which makes them masculine plural. --WikiTiki89 21:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If grammar references are irrelevant, I have no more questions.
 * Words like телята, ягнята, поросята are formed from old теля, ягня, порося with "ѧ", F Vizin, p. 405. Cf. Czech děvče has the plural form "děvčata" (девчата). Zaliznyak simply defines -онок/ёнок -> -ата/-ята as belonging to neuter 1a declension. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:34, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think grammar books are irrelevant. What Zaliznyak says is (bottom of p. 42 in my edition):
 * мн. число на -ята, -ата следует образцу среднего рода (типа 1a), на -ятки, -атки — образцу женского рода (типа 3*a).

If I'm not mistaken, this says that they follow the pattern of neuter nouns in the plural, and –ёночек/ятки nouns follow the pattern of feminine nouns in the plural. But this doesn't say they're actually neuter or feminine. I'm inclined here to think they should be treated as masculine, since the singular is masculine and the pre-reform evidence points to their being treated as masculine; we need a good reason to assert that nouns change their gender in the plural. As an example, a noun like очко has nom pl очки, gen pl очков, but that doesn't necessarily mean the gender switches to masculine in the plural. Benwing2 (talk) 01:34, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Any comments? Benwing2 (talk) 03:58, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Now the declension table says the word is neuter but the headword line says it's masculine. Is that OK? Yes, we can think that ребята is 'm-an 3°a' or 'm-an 1a①②' or 'n-an 1a'. Zaliznyak just uses more standard paradigm, he does that way everytime. If we think ребята is a single word in modern Russian then morphologicaly its gender doesn't change (we shouldn't use etymology). You can just remove gender from the headword line like dictionaries usually do.--Cinemantique (talk) 05:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The declension table says it has the form of a neuter, not that it's actually neuter. Those notes in the table headline are always based on the form, not the actual gender, which may be different. The headword should contain the actual gender. Benwing2 (talk) 06:03, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The actual gender cannot be defined in this case.--Cinemantique (talk) 06:15, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * What about дети? It previously was listed as both masculine and neuter, since it's the plural both of ребёнок (which is masculine) and дитя (which is neuter). Anatoli modified it to be just neuter. Since ребёнок is much more common than дитя, I would imagine that дети is normally masculine. Also, this word has the form of a masculine or feminine noun, not a neuter (although as discussed above this isn't probative). Searches for "молодые дѣти"+"въ" and "молодыя дѣти"+"въ" show that both forms existed. Not sure what to make of it. Benwing2 (talk) 05:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "молодые дети", "молодые котята" ("молодая девушка", "старый дед" and so on) - tautology (absurd) --Fractaler (talk) 06:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * According to M. Lomonosov (Russian Grammar, § 205) there's a group of neuter noun ending in "-я" - щеня, цыпля, жеребя (declined as дитя) - plural forms are modern цыплята, жеребята but in the singular their diminutive forms are used цыплёнок and жеребёнок (masculines). There are various links showing the historical neuters, no longer used in modern Russian or considered "Ukrainianism" or other Slavisms - . Some nouns may have just followed the same pattern (if a historical neuter can't be found, eg something like "ребя")
 * девчата is a neuter too. No declinable feminine plural ends in "а".
 * "маленькія дѣти" has much more hits than "маленькіe дѣти". And the etymology is important. It's derived from "дитя", not from "ребёнок". That's why дети is a neuter, in my opinion.
 * This is controversial and I oppose making those irregular plural masculines (or feminines). If you guys still go ahead and make those nouns other than neuters, this needs to be synchronised with the Russian Wiktionary, which uses neuter throughout this type of nouns.
 * As a compromise, no gender in the headword is better or use "or". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "маленькія дѣти" gets 303 actual results (after actually paging through the results). "маленькіe дѣти" gets 130. So I think it's safe to say that "дѣти" was both masculine and neuter. It would be interesting to see whether they are used in different contexts and whether they have different meanings. But anyway, you have to separate declension from actual gender. For example, uses a feminine declension, but it is nevertheless a masculine noun. Likewise, just because  has a neuter form, doesn't mean that it is or was treated as neuter (although the n.pl. vs. f.pl. distinction is more difficult to establish through pre-reform orthography because you have to find whether the pronoun  or  was used to refer back to it), and my hunch is that  was treated as a feminine plural. Etymology is only relevant if we do not have better evidence, and in these cases we do. And the pattern seems to be that plurals are treated as the same gender as their actual singulars and not as their etymological singulars. Also, we absolutely do not have to synchronize with Russian Wiktionary. We are separate projects and make separate decisions. And this project is based on evidence, not idealism. I have said that if it weren't for pre-reform orthography, I would be in favor of removing gender from all plural nouns, like we do for German. But because pre-reform orthography does make gender distinctions in the plural, we should make sure to have these genders match how they were used in pre-reform orthography. --WikiTiki89 16:11, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * OK. My feeling is that we should use the following evidence, in the following order:
 * What the grammar books say.
 * Pre-reform spelling.
 * Etymology.
 * Anatoli, note that ruwikt doesn't say that all -ата/-ята plurals are neuter, e.g. котята is just a redirect to котёнок, which is said to be masculine. Ruwikt does say that ребята and девчата are neuter.
 * My copy of Zaliznyak has separate entries only for the following forms, which are claimed to be neuter: ребята, внучата, девчата, княжата, also деньжата but this may not be of the same class (I don't know what it means and it's not animate and not in enwikt or ruwikt, maybe something to do with money or coins?). правнучата isn't present but can be assumed to work like внучата, whatever we decide for it.
 * I'm not opposed to making these particular words neuter and others in -ята/-ата masculine, or making them follow the gender of the singular.
 * For дети there's a separate entry in Zaliznyak but it just says "plural of ребёнок and дитя". This suggests to me that it should be both masculine and neuter, per the singulars. Benwing2 (talk) 18:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * But does Zaliznyak say that the words are neuter or only that their declensions are neuter? I would oppose favoring grammar references over real evidence, but my gut feeling is that grammar references would actually get it right and, if interpreted correctly, only say that they are neuter for the purposes of declension. --WikiTiki89 19:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Unclear. For example, девча́та says мн. <со 1a>, §3 where со means "neuter animate". Section 3 has a bunch of text but doesn't talk about gender. Now, the nearby entry for та́та says мо <жо 1a> where мо = masculine animate and жо = feminine animate, which I take to mean "masculine animate, formed as a feminine animate type 1a". This suggests that мн. <со 1a>, §3 means "plural [gender unspecified], has the form of a neuter animate type 1a". Benwing2 (talk) 19:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Not sure why you think it's unclear. It's pretty clear to me that Zaliznyak is not making any statement about the grammatical gender and only about the morphological gender (is there good terminology for this distinction? I keep having to make up new ways to phrase it). --WikiTiki89 19:31, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I might soften my position on this and move on, if you all insist on using the singulars' gender and ignore the declension type, etymology or any references. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't mean to bulldoze you into submission. I think we should do what the references say, first of all. I think Wikitiki is right that Zaliznyak isn't really assigning any gender to pluralia tantum. I'm OK with having no gender for pluralia tantum in -ата/-ята (or even for all pluralia tantum, if we really want that). I'm also OK with assigning gender neuter to the -ата/-ята pluralia tantum; it's only 4 words or so in any case. I do think for normal plurals we should match the gender to the singular rather than follow the form; otherwise we'd need to say e.g. that очки is masculine, and we'd have problems with masculine nouns that have nom pl in -а or genitive plural in a null ending. As for etymology, keep in mind that languages change over time; e.g. Romance amor/amour/amore has changed gender over time in a number of Romance languages. Benwing2 (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * No-no. I don't think you bullied me to change my mind or something. We have been using the declension types to determine the gender of pluralia tantum (as one of the methods). девчата would be the only declinable feminine noun with plural ending "-а" and I find the etymology interesting, e.g. a neuter noun порося is not just a "Ukrainianism" but an old Russian word. Using pre-reform adjective "-я" vs "е" and онѣ (оне) test is not always reliable. I think "онѣ" got partially out of use earlier, before the spelling reform. For words without singulars, like деньжата (colloquial diminutive of деньги), shall we use the gender of "деньги"? BTW, why the plurality is not shown in гроздья and грозди (plural sense). Is it becoming error-prone? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:42, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you're missing the point here. I'm not saying that we should only use one method to determine the gender of all words. If the evidence in the pre-reform orthography is inconclusive, and it is not clear what the real singular is, then we can look to etymology and other things for a clue. Each word needs to be investigated individually. (Also, I don't think "онѣ" fell out of use in the written language until the reform. It did of course fall out of use in the spoken language much earlier, which may have increased the frequency of errors, but anyone who with a basic knowledge of statistics knows how to account for errors.) --WikiTiki89 23:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * (E/C) I don't like your bossy tone. I got your point I just don't agree with some of your arguments. Pronouns "оне" (онѣ) and "они" are pronounced differently. The reform wouldn't remove "оне" if it didn't fall out of use and didn't sound archaic then. The frequency of errors is also reflected in the adjectival spellings. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад)
 * I did not intend to have a bossy tone, and I'm sorry if I came off that way. The reform caught the written language up with the spoken language. Онѣ may have sounded archaic, but it didn't look archaic when written in a book, because that's how all books were written. What I meant about errors is that errors can make a one specific instance of a test inconclusive, but they can't invalidate the test in general. So yes, in some cases we might find that there are too many errors do tell which one was correct (inconclusive results), but in other cases, it will still be clear which ones were correct (conclusive results). The important thing is that it is not so hard to tell whether the results are conclusive or inconclusive in each specific case. --WikiTiki89 15:50, 27 January 2016 (UTC)


 * You're right that declension types are often the source of plurale tantum gender, although like Wikitiki says they aren't the only source. At this point I don't care that much what's chosen for gender or even no gender at all, I just want something chosen. As for not showing the plural in гроздья and грозди, I made the decision to only include plural gender in the headword for pluralia tantum, because otherwise it's derivable from the definition. This is because you requested not including gender (e.g. in verbs and adjectives) in preference to specifying it in the definition line, whenever possible. Benwing2 (talk) 00:07, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I meant removing gender, number and animacy, which are always used together. гроздья looks confusing. Missing "pl" indicates "singular".
 * As for -та plurals, I guess we can make them declined as neuters with masc/fem meanings. For a word like деньжата, the feminine gender is only known etymologically from деньги, otherwise it doesn't even make sense to use feminine here but I'll leave this one for discussion. The etymologies, former pronouns and adjective endings are almost lost, anyway. Without etymological sections, people will start wondering why поросята (< порося) is a neuter. That's why I decided to compromise. I am more interested in results, not making points. мужчина, папа are different, they are not declined as feminines. They just belong to the 1a group of masculines. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:08, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll put back pl in the gender field when it's possible. Keep in mind that sometimes the same entry contains defns for singular and plural forms, and then it won't be possible to put pl in the headword. As for -та plurals, not sure what you're agreeing to here. I think you're saying it's OK for plurals like котята that have a corresponding singular to match the singular gender. For sort-of plurale tantum nouns like ребята, внучата, правнучата, we can make them masc since they have corresponding masculine singulars ребёнок, внук, правнук. For девчата, деньжата, княжата, maybe we should make them neuter by default. Benwing2 (talk) 02:48, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, adding "pl" will make things more complex (will require multiple headwords) but clearer and not misleading.
 * I am agreeing to display the gender of singular forms, not (necessarily) declension-type gender, e.g. "котята" is the plural of a (modern) masculine noun, so make it masculine in the plural as well (the original neuter "котя́" may not be attestable). The references don't assert (or don't do it strongly) this type of nouns should be neuters.
 * "княжата" is actually a plural of a masculine "княжёнок" and "девчата" has a definite feminine sense, "деньжата" a diminutive of a feminine plurale tantum. There's no clearcut solution here but I don't see sufficient arguments on deciding one way or another. "внучата" is not only plural of "внук" but also "внучёнок" (diminutive of "внук"), has a more gender-neutral meaning (including granddaughters - внучка/внучки). Grammatical neuter or no gender for all these would make it easier to code, perhaps but I am not insisting any more, just ranting. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:11, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I moved the discussion to Module talk:ru-headword. Not sure if this is the right place but I'm trying to consolidate discussions on scattered talk pages into more standard places, and the module talk pages seem the most natural fit. Benwing2 (talk) 04:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Showing plural gender in headwords, and whether to split up singular and plural defns in the case of syncretism (cont'd)
(continued from above; Wikitiki and Cinemantique, your comments are welcome here as well) Anatoli, I think what you want is for there to be separate headwords when there is syncretism of singular and plural cases. Existing practice is to combine them under the same headword, as in жизни and абразивным (both created by User:KoreanQuoter, but User:Cinemantique follows the same practice) and работы (created by my bot). Note that I already did a bot run creating gen sg, nom pl and gen pl of the most frequent 8000 or so nouns -- basically, all of the nouns in Appendix:Frequency dictionary of the modern Russian language (the Russian National Corpus). In the case of my bot, if the gen sg and nom pl coincide exactly, you get two definitions under the same headword, as in работы mentioned above. If the gen sg and nom pl differ only in stress, you get separate headwords under the same etymology section, as in стороны. If two forms of different lemmas happen to coincide, you get different etymology sections, as in физики. I could potentially change my code so it won't insert a definition for a singular if there's an existing plural and vice-versa, and instead will create separate headwords in cases like работы, although it will require writing a new script to go through and change all the existing forms, splitting them up appropriately. But it's not clear this is the right thing to do; I think the existing practice is probably correct. As for the gender in the headword, my current practice is to insert pl in the gender only for plurale tantum nouns; this is because the plurality isn't mentioned in the definition line. But there are two other possibilities: (1) include pl whenever there's a plural defn, and no singular, otherwise don't include it; (2) if there are both plural and singular definitions, include two genders, one without pl and one with it. This would mean that работы would have a gender of,. What does everyone think? Benwing2 (talk) 04:46, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we should just drop genders completely from the headword line of form-of entries. Perhaps the gender should be included in the template itself to show that it applies to the lemma. --WikiTiki89 15:52, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm going to follow the last option above, putting in e.g., when both singular and plural are present. Want to make sure this is OK with you. Benwing2 (talk) 01:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, OK. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:49, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure, I don't care that much, but I still think my suggestion makes more sense. --WikiTiki89 15:53, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Now come to think of it, it just seems that my edits for the non-lemma verb, noun, and adjective forms were horrible, even in my own standards. I feel rather shameful of making inaccurate and low-quality non-lemma entries. Hence I don't make any those entries anymore. But anyways, I think the opinions of native Russian speakers here are the best than my own opinion. So, thank you for the decision-making. --KoreanQuoter (talk) 02:16, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * No worries. I am glad your editing is improving and I would still recommend to work on commonly used words, (not rare place names), those that can be checked by others easier but I don't want you to think I am manipulating you to do my work or something. It's your choice, of course. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I will also do that. --KoreanQuoter (talk) 02:54, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

indeclinable neuter nouns should normally be inanimate
(moved from Talk:хобби)

Can indeclinable neuter nouns using be made inanimate, by default or updated by a bot? The animacy is still important for indeclinable nouns, as this affects declination of adjectives used with them. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Animacy should be present on all nouns, whether declinable or not. I can write a bot program to find neuter indeclinables and update their animacy to be inanimate. Benwing2 (talk) 00:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, please. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The statement/header "indeclinable neuter nouns should normally be inanimate" is incorrect. It's not what I meant. I can't think of any NEUTER INDECLINABLE nouns being animate but there is no rule for that. I'm just asking to change their gender from "n" to "n-in". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry. You suggested making ru-noun make them be inanimate by default if animacy is unspecified, that's why I wrote that. But I do think it's better just to fix the entries to explicitly say "n-in" or whatever. Benwing2 (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * By coincidence, all(?)indeclinable neuter nouns are inanimate. A one-off update could fix them (n -> n-in). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

secondary stress in headwords and declension tables
Anatoli et al.: Should we include secondary stress in headwords and declension tables? I think Anatoli says no. I've removed them from the few places I've encountered them, based on this, but I want to see what everyone else thinks of this. Benwing2 (talk) 08:12, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for bringing up the topic, Ben. Didn't know that including secondary stresses in headwords is not recommended. Due to the randomness nature of putting secondary stresses, perhaps no IMO. --KoreanQuoter (talk) 08:15, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
 * There's currently a known issue with the search capability in Wiktionary. Search with accents doesn't return results without them. Secondary stresses may make them harder.
 * Out there it's not very common or not common at all to use grave accents to indicate a secondary stress, including online dictionaries. It is possible to include quoted accented words and find results in Google searches. Secondary accents produce nothing. Very often acute accents are used to indicate secondary accents or nothing at all.
 * Having said this, some dictionaries, like Zaliznyak seem to use them. They are useful, of course but their usage can be restricted to pronunciation sections. If everybody wanted them I wouldn't object too much. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think secondary stresses will make searching any more difficult than the primary stresses already do. But I do agree that we should not display them because generally readers will not be familiar with the meaning of the grave accent. --WikiTiki89 19:25, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

automatically add по- and -ей comparative variants of adjectives?
(moved from Talk:грешный)

Are forms like погре́шнее (from ruwikt) properly comparative or something else (e.g. superlative)? Benwing2 (talk) 00:45, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * They are still comparative. The deal is this: each (simple, not compound) comparative form can also take the по- prefix, 100%, AFAIK. Also, every comparative ending in -ее (regardless of the stress) can be shortened to -ей, a more colloquial form. Also, 100%, IMO. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:55, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I wonder if we could take a more generic approach on comparatives. Adding по- or -ее/-ей is competely predictive. Anyone with the knowledge of Russian just needs to know how to form basic comparatives, and по- or -ей are just their variants. We should either add по-, or -ей variant to each comparative or to none (and provide additional info on variants). I have no strong opinion on this yet. What do you think? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:16, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. I just modified the adjective code to take arbitrary numbers of comparatives. I could easily add the по- or -ей forms automatically; or we could leave them out. I'm not sure which is better, Wikitiki do you have any comments? Benwing2 (talk) 01:19, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The choice is to display all four - скорее, скорей, поскорее, поскорей as as comparative for скоро or just one form "скорее" and possibly provide the info on how to form variants. If there's more than one comparable, the number will be quadrupled. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:22, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * How about we list two, e.g. скорее, скорей and assume that the по- ones can be automatically formed? Not all comparatives end in -ее, and for the ones that don't, do they or don't they have equivalents to the -ей forms? Benwing2 (talk) 05:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * No, those don't have alternatives, only those ending in -ее (regardless of the stress). Two automatically loaded ones would be good, e.g. just add "скорее" but скорей comes up next to it? I'm sure you could add this trick. (по-) could also be added in brackets but link to forms without. (по-) could be added to comparatives' header. What do you say? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:35, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is totally doable. Benwing2 (talk) 05:49, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, comparative больше has alternative побольше but no others and these are all indeclinable comparatives, comparatives like лучший don't have alternatives. For скоро, the list of comparatives could look like (по)скоре́е, (по)скоре́й--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:24, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * We can have an expand/collapse box. I like the idea of listing all of them so that they will all be linked to, but I also like the conciseness of only listing one. --WikiTiki89 15:18, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I've implemented this for adjectives. Check out e.g. трудный. Should the same thing be done for adverbs? Benwing2 (talk) 05:27, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yes, adverbs as well. There's one little problem, though. Adjective-like comparatives ending in -ий (больший, лучший, меньший, старший, etc.) don't get a по- prefix. See большой. Only adverb-like indeclinable comparatives ending in -е, -ее, -ей. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:42, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Both issues fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry. We might need to review some rules. (по)болей, (по)меней. Sound weird. I will give you more info but could you exclude these two, please? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:42, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I added the argument noinf=y to suppress the creation of informal variants, and added that to много and мало. Benwing2 (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong, but поболее and поменее sound weird to me too. --WikiTiki89 18:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * But they do exist, do you agree? The frequencies and usage may differ. I don't have the rules and full lists handy but some more comparatives won't have variants with по- - e.g. южнее, севернее, восточнее, западнее. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:16, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, they do exist, and so do поюжнее, посевернее, повосточнее, and позападнее. --WikiTiki89 22:28, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See, something that sounds weird or non-existent may actually exist and used by others :) I haven't actually checked the existence of поюжнее, посевернее, повосточнее, and позападнее. Thanks for doing it.--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:04, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course, but in your opinion, does поболее sound weird? --WikiTiki89 23:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It would also sound weird to me if "поболее" were used in some cases when "более" should normally be used, e.g. "поболее сильный" but consider examples when its usage is appropriate, e.g. "У них народу поболее будет, как набросились все скопом, так и выпроводили с базаров." from "Жестокая любовь государя" (Евгений Сухов). Or simply "Числом поболее, ценою подешевле." --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:00, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Good point, it sounds totally fine there. --WikiTiki89 01:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

How to find multi-word lemmas?
(copied from Talk:папа римский)


 * Thanks. Is there a way of finding multipart entries without the category?--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 19:50, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * You can search for, which will given you all Russian nouns that are not in the category "Russian compound words", but that includes the single-word nouns as well and I can't think of an easy way to filter them out. --WikiTiki89 20:53, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry guys for being incommunicado, I've been busy with work and other real-life issues. The declension table needed fixing. You can get a list of multipart nouns using a tracking category I set up awhile ago for this purpose: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tracking/ru-headword/space-in-headword/nouns Benwing2 (talk) 09:17, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI -- comparatives now support + to derive a default comparative
I added support (actually a week or two ago) for requesting a default comparative form using + in place of the comparative. This derives a comparative according to Zaliznyak's default rules. You can also specify e.g. +b or +c', with the short form appended; this is necessary for adjectives that don't have short form a (which includes variants such as a*, a(1), a(2)). (In practice there are only two possibilities: stem-stressed, which corresponds to short form a, and ending-stressed, which corresponds to all others, include a'.) Benwing2 (talk) 01:33, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

What part of speech are comparatives?
I'm going through and fixing up comparatives, and this leads to a question: What is the part of speech of comparatives? I originally put удобнее as an adjective form, but I notice that дороже is given as an adverb. I get that comparatives might well behave adverbially, but putting them as actual adverbs using marks them as lemmas, which doesn't seem quite right. For example, we mark participles as non-lemmas even though they can be adverbial (or adjectival). For reference, better is listed under two headings, one as an "adjective comparative form" (comparative of good) and the other as an "adverb comparative form" (comparative of well). This is exactly comparable to the situation with дороже and удобнее. An alternative is to list it simply as a "comparative form", using, with one definition as the adjective comparative and the other as the adverb comparative. This would mean that comparative forms get put into a new category CAT:Russian comparative forms (in addition to CAT:Russian adjective comparative forms and/or CAT:Russian adverb comparative forms, which get added by the template). Benwing2 (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2017 (UTC)


 * They occupy the same syntantic slots as short forms of adjectives, except that they do not have gender and number agreement. So I guess I would call them adjectives when they are the comparatives of adjectives, and adverbs when they are the comparatives of adverbs. --WikiTiki89 21:50, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

More questions about comparatives and superlatives

 * 1) If a synthetic comparative exists, does the synthetic superlative always exist? I notice, for example, that a few years ago User:CodeCat ran a bot to add superlatives to Russian adjectives with comparatives. This happened, for example, with безнадёжный (in this case the bot made a mistake and wrongly entered a comparative безнадёжне́е and superlative безнадёжне́йший, with two accents). Meanwhile, I see for example that безопасный is given with comparative безопа́снее but periphrastic superlative "самый безопа́сный". Does безопа́снейший exist? Similarly for стро́гий, with comparative listed as стро́же and superlative as са́мый стро́гий; does строжа́йший exist?
 * 2) What are the regular rules for synthetic superlatives, assuming that one exists? I notice that comparatives in -ее and -е́е usually have superlatives in -ейший and -е́йший, respectively. I also notice that comparatives in -че, -же, -ше usually have superlatives in -ча́йший, -жа́йший, -ша́йший. However, all examples I can find of -а́йший have short forms in c or c'. Do any examples of superlatives in unstressed -айший exist?
 * 3) Can I fairly freely assume that adjectives with short forms also have synthetic comparatives? Zaliznyak does specifically call out certain adjectives as not having a synthetic comparative, even though they may have short forms (p. 69); these include, for example (can you think of any others?):
 * 4) Adjectives in не-, полу-, сверх- added to base adjectives that have comparatives in -е́е or have irregular comparatives;
 * 5) adjectives in -ск-, -цк-, -еньк-, -оньк-;
 * 6) compound adjectives in -кий, -гий, -хий, such as богоме́рзкий, длиннору́кий, зимосто́йкий.
 * 7) Many adjectives in -ённый have end-stressed short forms, e.g. заснежённый has short forms заснежена́, заснежено́, заснежены́. By Zaliznyak's rules these should have comparatives in -е́е, in this case заснеженне́е, but the actual given comparative is заснежённее. Other examples are сложённый and изощрённый (per Zaliznyak, in the meaning "highly sensitive, keen" it has short form изощрена́, but the comparative is still given as изощрённее, not изощренне́е). Zaliznyak doesn't have any special indications on these words indicating that they don't follow his rules for comparatives, and he doesn't specially discuss these words. Are the explicitly-specified comparatives correct?
 * Benwing2 (talk) 22:42, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Benwing2 (talk) 22:42, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, exist. The most common way in modern Russian to form superlatives for adjectives is  + adjectives but synthetic superlatives may coexist. A small group of adjectives also have superlatives, which have suppletive forms, as you know -  ->.
 * I'm not sure I can describe the rules for making synthetic superlatives. If Zaliznyak didn't describe them, I don't know if anyone else did. You can try and observe some patterns. Not sure if they have short forms at all. Which short forms do you mean, anyway? Adverbials - e.g. ? E.g. shouldn't have short forms. The endings with -а́йш- should all be stressed, AFAIK.
 * All adjectives may have synthetic comparatives, even if those can be rare, theoretical and sound a bit strange. E.g. "бо́лее большо́й" is perhaps an extreme example but even that one is perhaps attestable.
 * I don't understand your question. Is a short form? Isn't it synthetical? Yes, the adjective examples on Z, p.69 can't have synthetical comparatives or superlatives. I don't have an explanation on why the stress pattern is "заснежённее" and "изощрённее". An interesting example is  whose comparative is.
 * Please clarify what you mean by short forms. Note that many compound superlatives are becoming rare. That's probably why they are understudied and are not described well. Synthetic superlatives may not have the same meaning as normally formed compound or "periphrastic" superlatives. E.g. "са́мый стро́гий" and "строжа́йший" are not exactly the same. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 11:38, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, when I say "short form" I mean the positive adjective itself has short forms, not the superlative or comparative. For example, безопасный has sort forms безопа́сен, безопа́сна, etc. (type a*, where a means always stem-stressed and * means reducible) and близкий has short forms бли́зок, близка́, бли́зко, близки́/бли́зки (type c'*, where c' = end-stressed in the feminine, either end-stressed or stem-stressed in the plural and stem-stressed elsewhere). Generally if the positive adjective doesn't have short forms, there is no comparative either. Also, you say "all adjectives may have synthetic comparatives" but then give an example of an analytic (compound) comparative, do you mean that all adjectives may have analytic comparatives?
 * Basically what I'm wondering is (a) can I safely write a bot to add synthetic superlatives (in -ейший, -е́йший or -а́йший) to all adjectives with synthetic comparatives, and (b) is it reasonable to add synthetic comparatives to all adjectives that (1) have short forms and (2) aren't specifically indicated in Zaliznyak as having no comparative (i.e. not in the above group of не-/-ск-/compound-кий aadjectives)? If it would help I can compile a sample list of such adjectives. Benwing2 (talk) 14:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry, I meant the analytical form. Not sure if it's safe to mass-add the comparative forms yet. You need to be more certain about the rules, including stress patterns and exceptions. Yes, a sample list would be good. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Adjectives with theoretical short forms may only have theoretical comparatives and can be frowned upon by some. You need to be aware of this too.--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Where to place templates?
In new entries, I've been putting templates just under the ==Russian== headword, but some existing entries put in under the ===Noun=== or similar headword. See атеизм for an example where I moved it up. Not sure if this is correct, comments? Benwing2 (talk) 20:46, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I put just under ==Russian==. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:15, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I would only put it under a specific heading if there are multiple templates that apply to different sections. --WikiTiki89 22:24, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Linking по- variants of comparatives
I have the по- variant code to link to the regular and по- variants separately. See for example and. Do you guys like this change? I considered linking just the inside of the parentheses, but decided liking the parentheses looks less confusing. --WikiTiki89 15:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * : Thanks! I like it. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:32, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

comparatives of не- adjectives and of гордый, etc.
Zaliznyak puts a ~ by the entry for certain adjectives that don't have synthetic comparatives. His description appears to say these are "awkward", but he also puts an explicit note "сравн. затрудн." by various adjectives, e.g. хлёсткий, хру́сткий, жу́ткий, чу́ткий, кро́ткий and many others. So I take the ~ to mean "no synthetic comparative at all". The adjectives with this note include many beginning with не- and пре- and most ending in -ский, but it also includes some others like гордый and великий where I'd expect a comparative. Questions: Benwing2 (talk) 06:44, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Anatoli says that нелёгкий has no comparative at all, not even a periphrastic one (*более нелёгкий). I assume this applies to other adjectives in не- that Zaliznyak marks with the ~ sign? Examples are неравный, неполный, нехитрый, нехороший, негромкий, нечастый, неглупый, невесёлый, недолгий, немолодой, неважный, нечестный.
 * 2) Note that there are some adjectives in не- that Zaliznyak does not mark with the ~ sign, e.g. (1) нескро́мный, where he explicitly gives the comparative нескро́мнее (нескромне́е would be expected given the short adjective class); (2) нело́вкий, where Zaliznyak says "сравн. затрудн." instead of using the ~ sign; (3) недорого́й, where no indication of anything is given and so недоро́же would be expected. Are нескро́мнее and недоро́же correct and in use, and is the comparative нело́вче found but awkward?
 * 3) гордый is marked as ~, but I am guessing that it does have a periphrastic comparative более гордый. Correct? Similarly, does великий have comparative более великий?
 * : Please don't assume that ALL не- adjectives can't have periphrastic comparatives. Some might. Perhaps we need to look at them case by case, unfortunately (if we don't find a source on this). I think it's best or easier just mark them with "no comparative". Even if they can be combined with "более" but never have a comparative inflected form, it's a useful message. Russians know that they can use "более" if they can't use anything else. Similar with the English "more", which will work with almost any adjective. I even think we can get rid of "более" and "самый" from the header.
 * нескро́мнее and недоро́же sound weird but I found "нескро́мнее" in Google books.
 * Yes, peri for гордый and великий are OK but see my point #1. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:24, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Maybe the use of бо́лее is like the use of "more X" in English? You can use "more" with any adjective that can logically be compared (although it sounds strange with some adjectives that would most naturally use a synthetic comparative, e.g. "good" or "bad"). We do indicate whether an adjective can be compared with "more", e.g. outdoor says "not comparable" by it, but this is basically a matter of semantics, and there's not a bright dividing line: e.g. I found an example of "more outdoor" as a comparative, from a UK House of Commons report no less: "Men in teacher training were observed to be more political, more interested in business, more constructional and more outdoor than others in the sample, whilst women in ..." . So maybe just saying "no comparative" is fine. Benwing2 (talk) 18:15, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

More comparatives
(1) Do any of большущий, душераздирающий, непьющий have synthetic comparatives? It's hard to search for them since they look like neuter nominative singulars. Benwing2 (talk) 21:56, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, (2) Does ненастоящий have a comparative? (3) Does сиплый have a comparative and if so is it сипле́е (per Zaliznyak) or си́плее (per Ivanova, indicated as awkward)? (4) Is щупле́е (comparative of щуплый) normal or awkward? Zaliznyak says normal, Ivanova says awkward. Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 22:00, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * : 1. No, no, no., 2. No. 3. (сиплый) Both stress patterns, (сиплый, щуплый) not awkward for both terms, I think. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:28, 13 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Most dictionaries changed the type of сиплый to 1a: сипл, си́пла, си́пло, си́плы, си́плее. Yeskova thinks that си́плее is awkward.--Cinemantique (talk) 16:34, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Another similar question: Do any of the following have comparatives (all of them have compatible meanings): преходя́щий, непреходя́щий, работя́щий, удруча́ющий ? Benwing2 (talk) 21:37, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Also малознако́мый: has a compatible meaning, but it's a virtual negative, so maybe not. I can't find any examples. Benwing2 (talk) 22:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Wondering if you missed the ping above. Benwing2 (talk) 02:22, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * : Yes, I missed it, sorry. преходя́щий, работя́щий, удруча́ющий, малознако́мый might have short forms. To search, you can use feminine short forms.
 * Let me know if you're not about anything said above, I can't say if you're musing/sharing or asking in some parts. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. In this case, I'm actually asking about synthetic comparatives: do any of преходя́щий, непреходя́щий, работя́щий, удруча́ющий, малознако́мый have synthetic comparatives? малознако́мее strangely doesn't seem to exist, but I can't search for the others because they look like neuter nominative/accusatives. Benwing2 (talk) 02:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * : No comparatives. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:39, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * More comparative questions: зря́чий, незря́чий, круглоли́цый: do any of them have synthetic comparatives? I assume not (partly based on the meanings), but it's not really possible to search for them. In general, is it reasonable to say that *NO* adjectives in -чий, -цый, -жий, -ший, -щий (except for a small number of basic adjectives with monosyllabic roots, like све́жий) have synthetic comparatives, because the synthetic comparative would look like a neuter nominative/accusative singular? Benwing2 (talk) 17:55, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I am sure зря́чее can work as an occasionalism (1, I can look for more), but not sure it is worthy of inclusion in any way. As for the general note, I didn’t quite understand you: if you are asking if homonymy prevents speakers from making synthetic comparatives, than no, not at all. Guldrelokk (talk) 18:03, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : I don't think the reason for missing comparatives is the homonymy and the endings listed may not have to do with it, IMO. I would give no comparatives to "зря́чий". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:41, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

are all diminutives colloquial?
Efremova generally specifies that diminutives and endearing forms are colloquial. In fact, I looked up a lot of diminutives in her dictionary and couldn't find a single one that wasn't indicated as colloquial. Are all diminutives colloquial? If so, I can make a bot script to add this label to all diminutive definitions. Benwing2 (talk) 17:50, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : There's more to it. Diminutives may form or have already formed new words, they may just mean smaller objects (e.g колокол/колокольчик - church bell vs school bell, блюдо/блюдце - large dish vs flat plate), not always restricted to informal settings. This may need to be handled together with diminutives in other languages, such as German, Dutch, other Slavic languages, etc. which are rich in diminutives. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:37, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm specifically referring to diminutives where the actual dictionary definition says "diminutive of X" (уменьш.) or "endearing form of X" (ласк.). Every one of those is listed as colloquial, as far as I can tell. Neither блюдце nor колокольчик are defined as diminutives in any of the dictionaries I can find; rather, they're former diminutives that have lost their diminutive force and acquired some other meaning instead. Benwing2 (talk) 13:30, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : I think diminutives or endearing forms are special - they are either a subcategory of colloquial terms, in that case, all you need is make these a subcategory of the colloquial cat or leave as is. In any case, it's a policy question, which is not specific to Russian. Compare German or Dutch . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:23, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Trying to eliminate
I am trying to eliminate all uses of so that I can eliminate that template. There are some nouns whose declension I am unsure of. Here's a partial list:


 * Милейков (accent-a?)
 * гхи (invariable?)
 * Конго (invariable?)
 * Бурунди (invariable?)
 * пчелояд (accent-a?), yes, animate
 * бушня (accent-a?)
 * Парень (?) - like, non-reducible
 * кутак (two meanings; ?) - no idea, the word only appears in dictionaries, need to request inflections or RFV
 * Спрус (invariable?)
 * ипсилон (accent-a?)
 * аргентум (accent-a?)
 * червень (?) - like, must be reducible
 * калива (accent-a?)
 * эйч (accent-a?) - invariable
 * боз (?; probably not accent-a) - no idea, need to check with Vahagn about his source
 * анон (accent-a?)
 * Гродно (it says "usually indeclinable"; when it's declinable, as accent-a?) - in standard Russian, only indeclinable
 * меха (accent-a?) - etym1, yes, if the term is valid, need to RFV
 * Викимедиа (accent-a?) - indeclinable
 * локш (?) - I think it's b but it's a dated slang, IMO
 * Фокс (?) - a, animate
 * ланцуг (?) - b?
 * чел (?) - animate, slang, I think it only appears in nominative, or "a"
 * клюся (? maybe accent-a?)
 * голк (?) - perhaps
 * Пудауэль (indeclinable? and where's the stress?) - yes, last syllable
 * ян (it says "usually indeclinable"; when it's declinable, as accent-a?) - should only be indeclinable, same as инь

Benwing2 (talk) 12:20, 27 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Гхи, Конго, Бурунди, эйч, Викимедиа indeclinable. Гродно and ян indeclinable or accent-a (but I don’t think that declining Гродно is standard, unlike some other place names in -о). The rest is accent-a, except ланцуг, which is accent-b, and no idea about боз (judging from etymology, is the genitive бза?). Guldrelokk (talk) 12:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)


 * : Answered above, no answer means "yes". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 12:36, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * локш is a. Чел is declinable and a. The pattern of голк is clear from a proverb: Веселие волку, когда не слышит за собою голку. Guldrelokk (talk) 12:43, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : You're right thanks. I hate the use of "чел" but I should have checked better. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 12:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, I cannot imagine how Спрус and Пудауэль can be indeclinible. Guldrelokk (talk) 14:15, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : Thanks, fixed. Maybe I need a short break. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:11, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

As for боз, I found examples – it does decline like лоб – but they are all in Ukrainian. 1, 2, 3. Guldrelokk (talk) 15:09, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

The following are the only ones left that I still have questions about: Benwing2 (talk) 02:13, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Катманду (almost certainly indeclinable)
 * Маджуро (probably indeclinable)
 * Саха (?)
 * Сет (accent a? and does this refer to Set the Egyptian god or Seth the biblical character? and is the pronunciation with palatal С correct?)
 * Эйбел (accent a?)
 * Туркестан (accent a?)
 * абаш "alt form of " (?)
 * абдешень (? this doesn't even have a gender specified)
 * Данелаг (accent a? where is the stress?)
 * Азов (accent a?)
 * Катманду, Маджуро, Саха indeclinable. I don’t think any living person knows something about абдешень, see Talk there. The rest is a, but I’m not sure about the stress in . Сет is Set, Seth is Сиф, as usual. Guldrelokk (talk) 04:34, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : I have fixed what I could. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:37, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The remaining list is at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tracking/ru-headword/bad-ru-noun (this includes all uses of except indeclinable and alt-ё nouns). Most of the remainder are either nouns with manually-specified declensions or nouns with unknown declensions, but there are a few that still need to be converted. When the latter category is finished, I'm thinking of changing things so that you can't call  the way you used to for normal nouns, to prevent people (e.g. User:Wanjuscha) from continuing to use it for that purpose. Either I'll split it into separate templates (e.g.  for indeclinable nouns and  for manually-specified and unknown-declension nouns) and then obsolete  completely, or I'll add the requirement for  that the noun either has to be indeclinable or have special flags given (e.g. 1 for manually-specified nouns or 1 for alt-ё nouns). In the process I'll add special support for nouns with unknown declension and/or stress. Benwing2 (talk) 00:48, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Benwing2 (talk) 00:50, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I added support for 1 and for various unknown_* params (unknown_decl, unknown_stress, unknown_pattern, unknown_gender, unknown_animacy) and fixed most of the remaining cases. Only three left: (the vulgar usage) (is this unknown or accent a or b?),  (is this unknown or accent a?) and  (is this indeclinable, accent a or unknown?). Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 02:24, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I’m confident enough about . As for, Google search shows both аба́шем and абашо́м exist, no idea what is right. Guldrelokk (talk) 05:34, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Somehow I overlooked what exactly are the entries / . I thought it’s the tree. No idea about the dialectal term, it doesn’t show up in Google for sure. Guldrelokk (talk) 05:34, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I've done (1st sense) and . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:50, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you! I changed (and ) to throw an error unless the noun is indeclinable or one of 1 or 1 is given. Benwing2 (talk) 06:27, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

comparatives again of adjectives in -щий
I'm again stumbling over comparatives of adjectives in -щий. Guldrelokk earlier said that the fact that there's homonymy between the comparative and neuter singular doesn't prevent the comparative from existing, and suggested using "еще Х" to search for them. This sometimes works but in many cases the only examples I find look like neuter singulars, so I'm still out of luck in many cases. Any other suggestions for how to search for comparatives of these words? Some words that I think ought to have comparatives but can't find examples: Benwing2 (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2018 (UTC)


 * : Still no comparatives. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:35, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * : I’m not sure if and  are correctly labelled in the first place, to me they seem purely participial. It’s impossible to compare them even with более. For the rest comparatives are marginally possible, but not much in use, I’m not sure if they can be properly quoted. The reason is their participial past. Guldrelokk (talk) 07:12, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

short forms of adjectives and participles in -щий
I was under the impression that short forms of participles in -щий don't exist, but adjectives in -щий that look like participles may have short forms. But I've found some examples that look clearly like short forms of present active participles: Contrast these with the following examples, which appear more adjectival because the short form of -щий is parallel to a short adjective: Could someone help explain what's going on here? Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 22:42, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * пьющий : Он пьющ, курящ и любящ женщин. И что особенно важно для истинного художника, они его тоже пьющ и курящ... Но главное — и серьезно — не в этом. Главное качество Гердта: он — гений интонации. И не надо путать это с ...
 * танцующий : Мне думаете единственная его ошибка в этой постановке заключала в том, что Красс не был в спектакле активно танцующ фигурой. Этот образ был решен средствами пантомимы, балетной пластики и потому проигрывал и по ...
 * плачущий : надвое горько зело и страшно: едина убо страна аки нека жена напрасно плачущи, терзающи и кричащи татарским гласом о чадах своих, бьющися и слезы проливающи, аки реки; а другая страна земли, аки некая девица ...
 * танцующий : ... читая, что я так часто бываю на балах, что я пустился в большой мюнхенский свет, сделался развязен, многоглаголен и танцующ; напротив; язык мой костян по-прежнему, неловкость та же, и я возвращаюсь с бала, не произнеся ...
 * пьющий : Конечно, смешно, глупо, никакой безымянный герой не потаскун и бабник, для этого он слишком вял и пьющ, и все мы знаем, с какой легкостью сейчас бросаются угрозами, разучившись отвечать за базар... Он просто тихий, но ...
 * : It seems the examples of these short forms are only used for some humorous(?) effect. "любящ женщин" is grammatically incorrect but funny in "Он пьющ, курящ и любящ женщин". The example "плачущий [3]" pretends to be Old Russian. Authors are just playing with the language. I don't think we should consider these as citations for short forms. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:31, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Are you referring to all the examples or only the first three? Benwing2 (talk) 02:34, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * : To all of them as intentionally "funny" and one seems like imitation of Old Russian. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:38, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The first is intentionally ungrammatical, the third is real Old Russian, and the second has been clipped: it’s actually заключала(сь) and танцующ(ей). Guldrelokk (talk) 06:58, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed, Old Russian but using modern Russian spelling. I could only see half a paragraph. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:18, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * OK. I'm not surprised about the first three, that's why I called attention to them, but I'm still a bit confused as to what the issue is with the last two. Both of them are in predicate position and have short adjectives in apposition to the short participial adjective, and the second one is even modified by слишком; so they both look kosher to me. Benwing2 (talk) 15:05, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

dated/archaic/obsolete doublets
(moved from Talk:ваш)

How are the ‘dated’ short forms not obsolete? Guldrelokk (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : I'd mark it archaic or obsolete. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 11:50, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Russian seems to have only one word "устарелый" that renders all three of "dated", "archaic" and "obsolete". So when e.g. Zaliznyak says something is "устарелый" we just render it as "dated" when "archaic" or "obsolete" might be better. Benwing2 (talk) 01:54, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It should read "obsolete" now. Benwing2 (talk) 01:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Relatedly, ru.wikt uses the label "устар." (which stands for according to ru:Викисловарь:Условные сокращения). I used to think it's the equivalent of our "obsolete" label (as with /ru:млат), but ofttimes I see Atitarev or others choosing the "dated" label instead (/ru:заклать and /ru:хоробрый), sometimes the "archaic" one (/ru:ворог). Is there the same ambiguity about that term too?
 * Also, I've spotted a few discrepancies between Appendix:Russian doublets and the corresponding entries:
 * : archaic, poetic in entry, poetic in the Appendix;
 * : rare, poetic in the entry, archaic, poetic in the Appendix;
 * : archaic in entry, obsolete in the Appendix;
 * : poetic in the entry, archaic or poetic in the Appendix;
 * : poetic in the entry, archaic or poetic in the Appendix;
 * : obsolete in the entry, archaic in the Appendix;
 * : somewhat dated in the entry, archaic in the Appendix (since );
 * : colloquial in the entry, archaic or dialectal in the Appendix;
 * : nothing in the entry, archaic in the Appendix;
 * : dated in the entry, obsolete in the Appendix.
 * --Per utramque cavernam 17:57, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I don’t think can normally mean ‘dated’, that would rather be, which is used in dictionaries too. It is either archaic or obsolete. The difference is not always clear, however; here is how I would label these words and others may disagree:
 * : archaic, poetic, old poetry;
 * : archaic, poetic, not rare in old poetry;
 * : obsolete or dialectal, dialectal in Vasmer, have not seen used outside Old Russian;
 * : archaic, bylinas;
 * : archaic, literary, clearly gives an archaic feel;
 * : archaic, poetic, old poetry;
 * : archaic, poetic, old poetry;
 * : archaic or obsolete, old poetry, but rare there;
 * : archaic or obsolete, may be current somewhere, I am wrong then;
 * : archaic or dialectal, may be current somewhere;
 * : archaic, literary, clearly gives an archaic feel;
 * : obsolete or dialectal, dialectal in Vasmer, have not seen used outside Old Russian.
 * Guldrelokk (talk) 18:53, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks., do you feel the same way? Per utramque cavernam 12:59, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, something like that. is also poetic and current,  is also current, somewhat poetic or colloquial. Exact labels might be subjective. @P.u.c, sorry, these are a bit too many, if you feel they are really important, I will review them over time or use Guldrelokk's guidance if you want. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:04, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * No worries, that's not that urgent/important. I'm bothered by though; if that's Old Russian I should remove it from the list and add it to   instead. Per utramque cavernam 15:50, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : I haven't seen much of outside dictionaries either but there are a couple of real uses in Google books: "Ай же, братцы, дружина хоробрая!" or "Хоробрая дружина Соловьёвая!". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 16:11, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * And here's another, the third one: "Тутъ поскочила дружина хоробрая" - citable. I only used feminine forms, so "дружина" appears frequently for searching. Pretty sure can find others. "хороброе гнездо" was used once in «Сло́во о полку́ И́гореве» but "храбрый" is used several times. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 16:18, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is the dialectal part. Guldrelokk (talk) 07:59, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * : I don't mind if it's labelled dialectal. The citations are rare and it's hard to disassociate them from the Ukrainian influence today, rather than inherited from Old Russian. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 08:09, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have relabelled the entries. I removed the label poetic from, because it is specifically folk poetry, and not literary works like that in which and  were used. In Russian dictionaries there is a special label нар.-поэт. (народно-поэтическое, folk poetic). Guldrelokk (talk) 08:25, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There is also in this dictionary a 'folk poetic' label that I created specifically to render words such as . Benwing2 (talk) 15:09, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

support for dim= and adj= in Template:ru-noun+
You can now use them. Benwing2 (talk) 07:40, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Also in . Benwing2 (talk) 07:41, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yay! --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:42, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Also added adv=, absn= and dim= to ; see and  for examples. Benwing2 (talk) 07:53, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Also dim= for, as in . Benwing2 (talk) 07:58, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

total rewrite, more accelerator support etc.
I rewrote this module. Among other things, it supports + on adjectives to auto-generate an abstract noun in, and has accelerator support for headword inflections. The accelerator support is pretty extensive; for example, as a test I modified the headword of to look like this:

(This is intentionally incorrect; this is just for testing purposes.)

It generates this:

with a green link for, and if you click on it it creates the following text:

Noun

 * : FIXME_DEFINITION

Declension
Note how the manual translit is propagated in both the original adjective and the abstract noun derived from it, and various Russian-specific templates are used. I put FIXME's in various places that need manual editing or checking. If there is no manual translit, there won't be a FIXME in and it won't use phon. In the longer run I need to implement reverse transliteration of the manual translit to get the proper phon parameter; I have this implemented in Python already, and just need to port the code to Lua.

The accelerator support is there for female equivalent nouns, diminutive/augmentative nouns, abstract nouns, verbal nouns and comparatives. Some work still needs to be done on the comparatives, though. Benwing2 (talk) 07:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comparative and superlative accelerator generation should be working. See and  for examples. Benwing2 (talk) 08:18, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * This is a great enhancement, thank you very much!
 * As you said, it would be hard - it doesn't work if there is an entry already, e.g. is a comparative of both  (adj) and  (adv).
 * We can definitely use all these enhancements, just need to be aware of this. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * What is the parameter for augmentatives? I have tried aug on but it doesn't seem to work. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:01, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for adding augmentatives for nouns! As for adjectives/adverbs, there are colloquial forms like or . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 20:04, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi. If you're up to it, Russian nouns could use "derogatory" forms as well, like книжонка or душонка. Not a big number of nouns has derogatory forms but they may be useful to users when they exist. Many Russian first names have derogatory forms as well. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:34, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

demonyms and female demonyms

 * Hi. Could you please add demonyms and female demonyms here and at Ukrainian and Belarusian modules? Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:34, 17 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi. Thanks for adding on uk and be modules, could you add on ru as well. I tried but it didn’t work, so I pinged you then. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 14:05, 17 April 2023 (UTC)