All Russian nouns have a gender, which can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Even nouns referring to inanimate objects can often be masculine or feminine, which means that you have to use the pronouns "he" and "she" to refer to them, instead of "it." Luckily, you can usually tell the word's gender just by looking at it: feminine nouns end in -а or -я, neuter nouns end in -о or -е, and masculine nouns end in a consonant. Of course there are special cases and exceptions that you'll need to remember, but you don't need to worry about them right now! Check out this audio for examples of objects being referred to by their correct pronoun in a simple question: "Where is it?"
