One of the hardest aspects for Russian learners is the gender system. Nouns can be one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neutral. Are there ways of telling a noun’s gender, you ask? Why yes. For starters:

• If it ends on -мя, it is neutral: eg имя (name), пламя (flame), вымя (udder), бремя (burden), семя (seed)

• If it ends on -o, it is neutral: eg облако (cloud), шило (stitching awl), мыло (soap). Exceptions: торнадо (tornado) is masculine

• If it ends on -а, it is probably feminine, tho there are many masculine exceptions like юноша (young man), старшина (sergeant major), мужчина (man/male), дедушка (grandpa), слуга (servant)

• If it ends on -ость, a suffix used to create nouns from adjectives, it is feminine: яркость (brightness), серость (greyness), громкость (loudness)

• If it ends on -ь, aka the soft sign, it is definitely not neutral. If -ь is combined with either -ч, ш, щ, ж, as in a fricative sound, it is feminine: ночь (night), дочь (daughter), печь (oven), брошь (brooch), рожь (rye), вещь (thing). No such rule exists for the masculine kind, you will have to remember. There are also many feminine nouns which do not have the aforementioned combination, you will also have to remember them.