Working with nouns - Gender & Plurals in Marathi

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http://LearnMarathiWithKaushik.com

All lessons from this blog and more are available there

Till now we have worked on pronouns. Let us move towards other nouns and proper nouns.

Major difference in English and Marathi is in determining gender and plural forms.

In English generally non-living objects are considred neuter gender. But in Marathi even non-living objects can have masculine or feminine gender.

e.g Mango i.e. आंबा (AMbA) is masculine.

Cigarrete i.e. सिगरेट (sigareT) is feminie

Leaf i.e पान (pAn) is neuter.

Interestingly there is no specific rules based on which gender is decided !! So you have to do your guess. As you keep reading, listening Marathi more and more you will now about what is considered what.

Similarly depending on the gender and ending vowel of the word it plural is formed differently.

I have tried to summarize few rules here

Gender	Ending vowel	Plural form will end with	Singular –Plural Example	Meaning in English
Masculine	आ (A)	ए (e)	फळा  - फळे phaLA – phaLe फुगा – फुगे phugA – phuge	Board - Boards Ballon -Ballons
Feminine	ई (I)	या (yA )	बरणी - बरण्या baraNI baraNyA सावली - सावल्या  sAvalI - sAvalyA	jar-jars shadow - shadows
Feminine	अ(a)	आ(A) ई  (I)	माळ – माळा mAL - mALA मांजर - मांजरी mAMjar - mAMjarI	garland - garlands cat - cats
Neuter	अ(a)	ए (e)	पान – पाने pAn - pAne	leaf - leaves
Neuter	ए (e)	ई  (I)	पाते - पाती pAte - pAtI	blade - blades
Neuter	ऊ (U)	ए (e)	पिल्लू पिल्ले pillU - pille	chick - chicken

Note for Feminine ending with अ(a) there are two ways of creating plural. For some plural ends using आ(A) and for some plural ends with ई  (I). There is no specific rule which one to use when. You will understand it as you will read more and more Marathi. 

For other words which do not fit in above rules, the singular and plural forms are same.

e.g. earthen pot is called माठ in Marathi which is treated as masculine. So its plural form is माठ only

e.g. 1 earthen pot 10 earthen pots 1 माठ – 10 माठ 

I have started creating list of Marathi nouns, their gender and plural forms. List is uploaded as an excel sheet at
https://sites.google.com/site/learnmarathionline/home/nouns-gender-plural-and-forms-for-prepositions
Download the excel sheet to view it correctly.
Excel sheet is not complete. I will keep adding more and more nouns. So please check this link frequently to see newly added nouns.

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Note :-  Right hand side of the blog shows "Blog Archive". Expand it fully to see whole list of posts to Learn Marathi. Learn Marathi grammar and many aspects Marathi language online.
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