Russian word for a male zebra

Question

Let's suppose I am writing a fictional but realistic story about a male zebra.

Here is the problem. On the one hand, the grammatical gender of the Russian word "зебра" is feminine, so it is ungrammatical to write "зебра поскакал" and "полосатый зебра," as the grammatical genders must agree. On the other hand, it is extremely awkward to use feminine grammatical forms like "поскакалa," "попилa," "полосатая," "быстрая" to write about a male zebra when its physiological sex forms an important part of the context. Look how awkward it is: "Зебра стала лидершей табуна и могла выбирать себе партнерш для спаривания." A noun of masculine grammatical gender is needed.

I am aware that there is possibly no obvious or widely accepted Russian word for a male zebra and that whilst it is common to make feminine nouns from masculine ones (лось → лосиха, кабан → кабаниха, крокодил → крокодилица, медведь → медведица, etc.), it apparently does not work in the opposite direction, for apparently there are no suffixes that convert a female animal to a male one.

A variant is "самец зебры," but it would be awkward to use that expression repetitively throughout the story.

Another idea is "зебрик," but this word has a diminutive connotation, which I want to avoid. I want to write about a big and powerful male zebra.

How would the native speakers resolve this issue?

Answer 1

Russian has a long standing tradition of narrating fables (stories featuring anthropomorphic animals).

In this tradition, the grammatical gender of name of the species (not necessarily the proper name of the animal) should be the same as the biological sex of the animal .

Some have mentioned Jungle Book's Bagheera (who had been made a female in Russian adaptation), but this has little to do with his name.

The translator did not see any problem with Akela or Rama or other characters with declension I names, as long as she could put a masculine species name on them: волк, буйвол etc. Raksha is a female wolf, волчица, so she gets to stay a female as well.

However, this is a issue with пантера. The translator was faced with a problem: pick another species (she could have used леопард), make the readers accept that пантера is a boy in this story, or change Bagheera's gender.

I don't know why didn't the translator choose the option 1, but the option 2 (leaving everything as is) was so bad that going through the pain of changing Bagheera's sex through the story and having to cope with arousing difficulties was a better option.

Different authors choose different strategies for dealing with that, but in most cases, either the species or the sex gets changed, and only in rare cases the species name gender and the biological gender are left different:

• When translating "The Ant and the Grasshopper", Krylov picked another species instead of grasshopper, a dragonfly (стрекоза), apparently to give the fable a better rhythm. Of course she was made a female. He left the word попрыгунья ("a jumper") though, even though dragonflies don't jump.

• In "Winnie-the-Pooh" adaptations, the Owl (Сова) was made a female character, though a Russian word филин does exist.

• In "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", Chuchundra (a rat, крыса) and Karait were made females. Even though the Russian word крайт exists and is masculine, it was deemed too unfamiliar to the Russian reader, so Karait was made just a snake, змея, and hence female.

• In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the Dormouse (Соня) is female. The Caterpillar in different translations is either female (Гусеница) or changes the species (Червяк, "The Worm").

As you mentioned, changing the species name from masculine to feminine is almost always an option in Russian, so I can't think of a reverse situation off the top of my head (changing the biological sex from female to male in the story), but would not be surprised if it was ever the case.

So the answer to your question would be that:

You just don't write a traditional story about a male zebra in Russian. That's not how Russian story telling works.

The Russian word for zebra is feminine, so a zebra character should be female. If he should be male, he should not be a zebra.

If you still want to write a story about a male zebra in Russian, be aware that the reader would experience some sense of inconsistency that the readers in other languages would not. Phrases like Зебра Иван or молодой Зебра подбежал к своей подруге would sound as a not so good translation, as a joke, or something like that, which will distract the reader from the rest of your story. This even can be used for artistic purposes, but again, this would only work in Russian.

If for some reason you just have to make a boy zebra character in a traditional story, you just give this zebra a male name and refer to him by name throughout the story.

Answer 2

Zebra is a kind of horse, so жеребец (meaning stallion, a male horse) would be a perfectly valid word to refer to a male zebra. Of course it has to be clear from the context that the male horse you're referring to is also a zebra. For example, "полосатый жеребец", makes it pretty clear that you're talking about.

Answer 3

Usually, the developed lexicon for some species comes into existence due to the importance of such species in the everyday life of some specific region. That's why we have "кобель", "сука", "щенок"; "котёнок", "кот" and "кошка", "бык", "корова" and "телёнок".

And that's why we don't have a separate word for, say, newly born llamas. The same about zebras - the only real answer is that both in masculine and in feminine in Russian the only word one can use is "зебра". If for some reason this distinction should be done, the answers already provided covered it - "самец" and "самка" are the words to go for.

The other option would be to become a billionaire - or just a very influential person, to coin a new term and invest heavily into its adoption - then it can be "зебрик". Now it's only "зебра" :)

Answer 4

In Russian, both the male and female form of zebra is "зебра".

Зебра стала лидершей табуна и могла выбирать себе партнерш для спаривания

The correct form would be "Зебра стал лидером табуна и мог выбирать себе партнерш для спаривания". Otherwise you would be talking about a female zebra. In Russian you have to use the correct form of the (gender of the) verb when referencing objects.

In order to address the issue, you should name your hero (or somehow other differentiate it from the rest of the zeal) and refer to him by his name and not by a generic term "зебра", thus dereferencing the hero's gender from the female sounding "зебра". So it will become something like:

"Степан/Марти/Полосатик/Зебрик родился зеброй", "Он стал лидером табуна", "У него были красивые полоски"

You should avoid using "конь", but "самец" or "жеребец" is legitimate.

Answer 5

That's the matter of personal choice. But as we speaking of animals, I'd like to mention that in the classical Russian translation of "The Jungle Book" Bagheera simply becomes "she" to match his name and species (пантера) better.

But normally, you don't say just "зебра" when speaking of some particular animal anyway. You could say "самец", or, in a fiction story, an animal character could (should) have a personal name, etc.

"Зебрик" is only good for a child zebra.

Answer 6

Maybe just name this male zebra? Зебра Степан sounds great! Зебра Степан - единственный Степан в Африке!

Answer 7

In practical terms you once use the locution самец зебры and then drop зебры continuing with самец only, because from that point on it's already clear a male of what animal is being discussed.

In Google the expression самец зебры is common.

But it would be interesting to see how zoologists deal with this deficiency in their literature.

Answer 8

While it may not be officially a word, "Зебрец", which has an ending that is consistent with both "самец" and "жеребец", would probably be contextually understood.

It may sound weird, but it may also pass off as a neologism. Generally speaking, you may get away with some neologisms when writing fables, especially if they are constructed in a consistent manner.

For what it's worth, Google translate does translate "Зебрец" as "Zebra", when set to translate from Russian to English.

Actually, Google translate also has a recorded pronunciation for it. Google returns 86 results for "Зебрец" search. Although it looks like many of them are in Bulgarian. There is also someone who calls himself "Зебрец Полосатый" on ok.ru. So this word is not an original construction.

Answer 9

"A variant is "самец зебры," but it would be awkward to use that expression repetitively throughout the story."

If this story have a "sciencific style", it won't be awkward to use,it's normally. "cамец зебры" is usually.

And if not, and somebody used like a childness "zebrik" here, you can also use "zebroid" :> It's no really word in Russian for this, but all will understand this construction :> But here may be ironical and comical connotation for this word ... :> (And in the zoology it means slightly other thing)

Or if this is fairy tale or something like it - give a personal name for him..:>