Why do some languages have male and female nouns?

Question

Is there even an answer to this one?!

In Spanish, the table is feminine, the car is masculine, beer is feminine and (mysteriously) the clitoris is masculine. Plenty of other languages do this too, but there seems to be no consensus as to things that are masculine or feminine in every language. Cars are female in French, for example.

So how did this feature of language come to exist? Nobody in any language thinks that objects actually ARE male or female, they're just objects, so why did they start calling them "he" and "she"? And why do we NOT do it in English?


PS: Yes I know we sometimes call boats "she", for example, but that's just a figure of speech. According to the grammatical rules of English, a boat is an "it".

So far everyone's just telling me that nouns have different genders. Yes, I knew that already. I even mentioned it.

The question is, WHY? What purpose does it serve to label everything as male or female, even when the things themselves obviously aren't either?

And, Mr "I have a PhD in Linguistics", in Spanish at least, you use the same "she" to talk about your table as you do to talk about your wife, so in this respect I think it's fair for the layperson to call it a gender, even if linguists don't! Plus you didn't even try to answer the question, which is a shame as a linguist might be able to...

OK so real-world gender and grammatical gender have no connection.

But how did they decide that bottles, tables and beer belonged in one class, while television, dictionaries and cats belonged in another?

There's clearly no real-world connection between any of these things, so why should they be grouped together grammatically?

Answer 1

you really do need to listen to taivo. a 'gender' originally is just a noun class. most languages have genders, and in most languages genders are not sex-related.

kivunjo for example has genders for [things which usually come in bunches], [bunches of things], [specific locations], [nonspecific locations].

even among european languages classical greek (for example) has four genders, so obviously classical greek does not particularly align 'gender' along sex-lines.

in europe - mainly as a result of historical accident - we have many languages which derive from latin: a language which happened to have strong overlap between sex-differentiation and grammatical gender. though even then it is not true to say that tables, poets and stories (mensa, poeta, fabula) are 'female', it is only the case that most things which are female happen to belong to the same gender as tables, poets and stories do.

the word gender (from latin 'generis') in fact originally had nothing to do with 'sex'. people started using the word 'gender' as if it meant 'sex' relatively recently (mainly because they were worried that 'sex' was a dirty word, 'gender' sounded a lot more refined).

so grammatical 'gender' and physiological 'sex' originally only got connected because grammarians were prudes. a welsh-speaker doesn't think a tom-cat is 'feminine', a french-speaker doesn't think a [word for female dog] is 'masculine'.

a german speaker doesn't really think that a turnip is feminine and a girl is neuter. of course he doesn't. german people would be very strange if they did.

gender is nothing to do with sex, it is to do with how languages work. it happens that in languages derived from latin gender organises itself loosely along sex lines ('mentula' of course is feminine). this is just one of those random happenstances; it isn't significant.

europeans (including norteamericanos in this) are notorious for imagining that the whole world thinks the way they do, and that their way and their way alone is 'right'. so they have confused 'gender' with 'sex' and now expect everybody else will too.

but they aren't the same thing, not in language, and not anywhere else either.

Answer 2

The answer to your real question 'how did this feature of language come to exist?' is so simple. Just like any other linguistic or grammatical nuance, in any language, we say things a certain way because THAT'S THE WAY WE HEARD IT! People say a certain thing a certain way long enough it becomes a rule. I am sure someone has published their thesis on the influences of colonialism, religion, etc.... on the grammatical rules of a particular language, but it will tell you the same thing I am. We hear things a certain way BECAUSE of all of those influences. Humans don't like change so we stay with what is comfortable. Next thing you know, you got a rule.

Answer 3

There is literature on this, I just know it! A language teacher, German, I think, explained a theory to me, but all I remember is that there is an academic theory.

The website below hints that this is the case:

"Noun classes are used in various languages to narrow the semantic domain of the world. Or, at least, that's probably why they were originally put into place".

"semantic domain of the world" sounds like a term of art to me. Funny that if you put "noun classes why" into a google search, the first result is your question! I suggest a trip to a public library, since librarians are word people and used to looking things up, they may hit pay dirt for you. Good luck!

Answer 4

We used to have masculine, feminine and neuter in Old English, but it's faded away. The only time gender is still evident is in the personal pronouns, where we have a masculine 'he', feminine 'she' and neuter 'it'. It's not quite the same though.

It's just one of those things the English language has lost, along with most of our case system (again that's only evident in the pronouns as well).

Answer 5

In German Grammatical genders have no longer something to do with genuine life sexual orentation. occasion. Das Mädchen is neuter meaning a youthful female. So is das Fräulein although because maximum articles that talk with female individuals are female, and maximum articles rerferring to male individuals are masculine you utilize he or she extremely of it. although in German, there is a few words for it in German and that's fairly complicated to describe. additionally our nouns have genders too, although that's much greater simplified. A male guy or woman is masculine. a female guy or woman is female. something different than a residing ingredient is many times neuter different than for ships. although human beings each and every so often talk with babies and animals as its, although this use is assorted and local.

Answer 6

In many languages there are GENDER divisions so the article, the noun and the adjective COINCIDE

examples LA MESA ES BLANCA
EL CARRO ES ROJO
In German its worse because of a neutral Gender and
article
so Das Haus ist grosz

Answer 7

It is an interesting question. I think that it is something arbitrary. Perhaps, ( I am guessing ) many centuries ago, people had primitive minds , and they saw that everything in Nature around them had gender, so they began to give gender to objects because that made sense in their simple minds, and the custom has remained up to our days

Answer 8

Greek is the same there are six ways to say the one word. In a masculine, feminine or neauter. Very confusing my grammer is shite but everyone seems to know what i go on about.

Answer 9

i'm not sure why- but it all could have started with latin. they also have genders, but don't have sentence structure- so they really needed gender just to know what everyone was talking about....
the cat ate the fish: the fish ate the cat if they didn#t have gender they could mix it all up

Answer 10

We have male and female in the Welsh language. It's a bit like French...but very different..lol

Cat...(Cath) female

Dog (Ci) male

Then words change depending if male or female when we "treiglo" (awww blast..no translation for that sorry!!)

Ei gar (his car)

Ei char (her car)

There you go...a quick Welsh lesson for you!!!