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If I hover over Какой, the translation says both "What" and "Which". Yet "Which is your native language?" is incorrect. Why is that?
You usually use "which" to ask the listener to choose among a set of options, while "what" leaves the answer open.
You are asking just that, among the set of options "all the languages" which one do you speak. Same if you ask about a car, when you ask which car do you drive? the set of options is the available cars. If you ask what is on your mind, then there is a difference. But to me, which language do you speak? sounds perfect.
I agree. While I absolutely understand vitaoma's point, because there's a possible context he's correct, "which" could also be correct. Maybe a person grew up in a country with multiple official languages, and is being asked which one they think is their native language. So I absolutely think "which..." should be accepted.
You know, I was stumped how I would answer this question. You are spot on, thank you. : )
Is there a relationship between род and родной? Indicating gender as the innermost native characteristic of a person, perhaps?
Yes, there is a relation between род and родной. No, sexual gender is пол in Russian. These are not related. I believe you are confusing "gender" with "sexual gender". Gender in English comes from "gendre" French, which comes from "genus" Latin meaning "sort" or "kind." Род has precisely this meaning, not the sexual one.
Sure, but grammatical gender, regardless of its etymological root, IS related to biological gender. I didn't put род strictly in this sense though, it was more a rough way to bridge the two words, with gender being a native characterist. What is the relationship between them, in your opinion?
What makes you say that? The fact that words describing femenine persons are typically femenine and words describing masculine persons are typically masculine. If that is your point, yes, I would have to agree. All I am saying is that the word род itself is not related to gender, to the best of my knowledge.
A literal translation would be женский род = feminine TYPE, мужский род = masculine TYPE, this refers to the TYPE of the noun. I hope that clears things up. Maybe a native speaker could weigh in on this.
Because language mirrors structures in nature, as it serves and was developed precisely to describe them in the first place. It would a huge stretch to say that grammatical gender and biological gender are two completely unrelated concepts that evolved in parallel to each other and just happen to overlap by chance.
Yeah, I would like to hear it from a native too. It could be one of those things that are buried in the centuries of language development, but I imagine that there might be a certain feel to it that only a native would be able to explain.
"Type" is exactly correct translation for род. And yes the word род on itself has absolutely nothing to do with gender. Grammatical gender and biological gender did evolve in parallel but they are not the same.
It's not like we actually applying any gender role to an inanimate object. Grammatical "gender" is mostly about the structure of the word rather than any characteristic of the object it describes.
Think of it this way: there are three types of nouns. The type depends on the ending and it defines the way the noun inflects and the way the adjectives, pronouns and sometimes verbs that go with it inflect.
Then you have two biological genders. Traditional way of distinguishing them in speech is to apply the corresponding words of one type to females and the other type to males.
After you made this connection, it's become fitting to call the first type "feminine", the second one "masculine", and the third one that was left out gets the name "neuter". Thus all the other objects, that have no actual gender, suddenly become masculine and feminine since that how we called the types of words that describe them.
Because there is a subset of masculine adjectives that end in -о́й (that is oj with a stress on the o), e.g., большой, больной, родной, другой, молодой и т.д.
Do they always end in ой? Because I put in "warm day" and "warm fish" in google translate and for day it was теплый and for fish it was теплой
Google translate is utterly unreliable. The masculine nominative form of the adjective is "тёплый". "Fish" is a feminine noun so the correct nominative form of the adjective is "тёплая", but for some reason on "warm fish" it gives you the answer in a different case. Just now it showed me "тёплой рыбы" which is genitive case, the nominative is "тёплая рыба".
Edit: for checking different forms of a word, this site is immeasurably better than GT. The whole site is in Russian so it may take a bit to learn your way around but it's well worth it. http://www.morfologija.ru/%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0/%D1%82%D1%91%D0%BF%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%B9
The female voice clearly pronounces родной with an additional initial syllabel with an "a". This is confusing
