why there is no "feminine" nor "masculine" for nouns in English?

Question

for example in french you say " la porte " which means "the door" in french ..she is " a door "
in english it has no sex..why is that !

Answer 1

There used to be grammatical genders in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon, as it is also known). In fact, it had three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The word for 'door' was duru and it was feminine, as in French; the word for 'field' was feld and was masculine; the word for 'ship' was scip and was neuter. So 'that big door' would be seo greatu duru; 'that big field' would be se great feld and 'that big ship' would be thæt great scip.

However, languages evolve and English is no exception; over the centuries, English gradually lost its grammatical genders. That doesn't mean that English has become easier for foreigners to learn - it is not an easy language to learn, especially when you consider the very large number of phrasal verbs, the huge vocabulary, with the many overlapping meanings and so on.

French too is evolving. After all, it is derived from Latin, which had three genders. And most of the languages that are derived from French, such Morisiê (Mauritius creole) have no grammatical gender.

Anyway, you be thankful you are not learning the West African language, Fulfulde. Some dialects of Fulfulde have 19 genders!

Answer 2

well techinically there is some nouns in english we do that with. Such as waiter or waitress and typically when referring to a boat people call it a she. English has a little bit of every language in it, thats why there are so many cognates(you know french words that look and mean the same as an english word). Basically, sadly enough, english is a messed up language so we do kinda have masculine and feminine but not completly like the french do.

Answer 3

Actually, as some others have already alluded, English does have gender, only you have to distinguish between 'natural' gender (i.e., that which is inherent in the referent: bull vs. cow) and 'grammatical' gender (i.e., that which is semantically meaningless). Even in cases such as ships and cars, which are sometimes referred to in the feminine, one could argue that these objects have been 'feminized' as male possessions.

What we don't see in English is grammatical gender, which likely derives from historically culturally pleasant sound combinations (cf. assonance in English poetry). An analogy in everyday spoken English would be the pronunciation changes in the definite and indefinite articles ('the' and 'a') before words beginning with a vowel. In the 'standard' dialect, people say 'a' banana but 'an' orange (although many other dialects use a glottal stop as in 'uh-oh' for the latter) and 'thuh' banana but 'thee' orange. (Here, of course, I'm just trying to approximate pronunciation through spelling.) In any case, French people do not think of doors as being any more 'feminine' than we do. As for why they still use grammatical gender, we might also ask ourselves why WE use 'an' and 'thee'. It just sounds good. :-)

Answer 4

Well the English languages is more intelligent. The door isn't female or male its nothing. Maybe the question is why do so many languages have masculine and feminine nouns when you can communicate without them. I read in the past that English language did have a more complex grammar, and then it was discovered that you can communicate without it, just as well. English is a lot bigger than the French language, so may be the English language makes up with words instead.

Answer 5

As English evolved from Old English/Anglo Saxon through Middle English into Early Modern English, we dropped almost all grammatical gender. The only other language to do so was Afrikaans. English has so many strange spelling and grammar rules and exceptions, it needs to be easier in other departments.

Answer 6

I am a highly qualified native speaking teacher of English. I would always ignore 'spell checker' as it is based on american English and not standard English spelling and grammar. Use whatever version of English you are most comfortable with, but be consistent and do not swop about within the same piece of writing. That's what I advise my students to do. To Dorothy - Yes, it does matter!

Answer 7

Who knows. Maybe as it evolved people got lazy and didn't want to bother with genders.

Did you know "arm" in French is "le bras". I just find that funny. =) I never forget whether an arm is masculine or feminine in French!

Answer 8

English still has a few nouns with unexpected genders such as a ship which we call 'she' in,'...may God bless her and all who sail in her' and a baby or small child that can be ascribed a neuter gender when he /she is called 'it'.Infallablejeff.

Answer 9

Good heavens....She is a door? I thought she was a woman or a girl? Who says the English don't have sex? Well...not with doors anyway only with women!!

Answer 10

I would say English has a lower Latin influence than other languages.