Are english nouns assigned a gender?

Question

My husband swears that in English each noun is assigned a gender, much like French. He states the cars are feminine. I think that men call cars "she" as a term of affection for their hobby.

Answer 1

no

I speak fluent english and hold a degree in the study of language not that I need the degree to tell you your husband got it wrong this time!

Answer 2

This is just sort of a ridiculous thought, really. Not that your question is silly, but your husband is obviously either being sarcastic or just doesn't know what he is talking about. Calling cars "she" is similar to calling a boat "she". It is something people do that I personally think is a tad sexist. It is almost saying an inanimate object has the same worth as a human being. Regardless, the English language does not assign gender to nouns, like Spanish or French. In Spanish, a male attorney is abogado - where I assume a female attorney is an abogada. That assigns gender. In English, an attorney is an attorney. The only time I can really see an English word assigning gender is in the following examples: waitress and waiter; actress and actor. There are other examples I am sure, but in this age of political correctness, many of these words are being phased out in English. Waitress/waiter has become "server" and an actress is usually considered an actor, now.

Think of it this way - if your husband's rationale were correct, which it is not, then what gender would a rock be assigned? Or a stapler? Or a desk? In other languages these are assigned genders but not in English. What your husband is talking about has nothing to do with English grammar and more to do with antiquated dialect.

Answer 3

In Modern English no grammatical genders are assigned to nouns.

However, there is a generally accepted tendency to refer to certain nouns with a feminine or masculine pronoun. Cars, as you mentioned, are often "she". Dogs are "he" unless there are known to be bitches and cats are "she" unless they are knows to be tomcats. There are more examples out there.

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By the way.. in Old English they did have noun gender.. maybe your husband is really learned and that's what he actually meant?

Answer 4

In Anglo-Saxon - sometimes called Old English - nouns did have gender - masculine, feminine and neuter - but these have been eroded over the years so that, nowadays, grammatical gender in English applies only to distinguish male and female animate beings (masculine and feminine) and inanimate objects (neuter).

Although I am myself an adherent to the male persuasion, I have to admit that the habit of assigning sex (not grammatical gender) to certain obejcts - like cars and ships - seems to originate - as you have astutely observed - from men using "she" as a term of affection for cars/ships/aeroplanes. Ladies seem to use these terms far more rarely and, significantly, you never seem to hear of male gender being assigned to any of these objects of affection....

Answer 5

as my dictionary states on the origin of the word car:

[Origin: 1350–1400; ME carre < AF < LL carra (fem. sing.), L carra, neut. pl. of carrum, var. of carrus < Celt.; cf. OIr carr wheeled vehicle]

it is decendant from old english and ancient french. where it indeed had a genter (female). if we look at the entry for car however.

car1 /kɑr/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kahr] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. an automobile.
2. a vehicle running on rails, as a streetcar or railroad car.
3. the part of an elevator, balloon, modern airship, etc., that carries the passengers, freight, etc.
4. British Dialect. any wheeled vehicle, as a farm cart or wagon.
5. Literary. a chariot, as of war or triumph.
6. Archaic. cart; carriage.

we see no notation of a gender. conclusion. english words used to, but do not anymore have a gender.

English grammer also does not consider the gender of a word. but objects, especially vehicles (ships, boats,cars) are occasionally, in old fashioned english replaced with the pronoun she.

Answer 6

The question should be why does English lack of grammatical gender? Since that's a very common feature of Indo European languages. In the case of Spanish it was inherited from Latin and that from Proto Indo European.

Answer 7

English nouns don't have gender, here's how you prove it:

in English you say "a boy" and "a girl"
in French you say "un garcon" and "une fille"

"un" is for a masculine nown, and "une" is for feminine, in English you just say "a"

your husband doesn't know what he's talking about

Answer 8

English nouns do have a gender...but since our articles don't use gender most of us don't know!

Answer 9

I read that once, and thought it was ridiculous then, and think it's ridiculous now. English has no grammatical gender. Men who call their cars "she" are just a bit goofy.

Answer 10

Although there is no grammatical gender in standard English, there are a few quaint expressions that use 'he/she' instead of it.

"I name this ship ***. God bless HER and all that sail in HER"

In the county of Somerset (UK), you will often hear "He be . . ." meaning "It is . . .", but this is dialect.