Gender: Usually, males are denoted by masculine nouns (e. g. nara- `man', masc. ) and females by feminine nouns (e. g. strã- `woman', fem. ); the gender assigned to nouns denoting sexless things has no clear semantic basis. There are, however, some fairly reliable correlations between a noun's gender and the form of its stem. e. g. stems in a are generally masculine and neuter, while stems in long vowels are mostly feminine.