# Can English be said to have gender nouns **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 17, 2011, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614 "2011-09-17T11:37:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/21 "2011-09-17T20:31:59Z")
I wonder whether part of the problem is that we’re using “gender” for two different things: referring to entities that are actually male or female, and sorting entities into classes. ISTR reading that some language, possibly Hungarian, has 10 or fifteen “genders”. Some of those may be male or female, but the others? Narrow things, bumpy and wiggly things, blue things, things that are alive, things that fall, things that are on fire, who knows? “Gender” in the sense of male/female doesn’t really seem to apply here. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/22 "2011-09-17T20:39:15Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I wonder whether part of the problem is that we’re using “gender” for two different things: referring to entities that are actually male or female, and sorting entities into classes. ISTR reading that some language, possibly Hungarian, has 10 or fifteen “genders”. Nope. Hungarian has no genders. You may be thinking of its elaborate case system… depending on how you count, there could be as many as 30 of them. > [@](#): > > Some of those may be male or female, but the others? Narrow things, bumpy and wiggly things, blue things, things that are alive, things that fall, things that are on fire, who knows? “Gender” in the sense of male/female doesn’t really seem to apply here. Indeed… Dyirbal famously has a separate grammatical gender whose members are comprised primarily of “women, fire, and dangerous things”. Its other three genders are “animate objects and men”, “fruit and vegetables”, and “miscellaneous”. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/23 "2011-09-17T20:43:02Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In German, the three words Frau, Frauelein, and Weib (wife) have three different genders. Where to begin? [ol] [li]There is no such word in German as _Frauelein_. It’s spelled _Fraeulein_ or (more commonly) _Fräulein_.[/li][li]The German word _Weib_, while it’s cognate with English _wife_, does not actually mean “wife”. It’s just a (usually derogatory) term for a woman.[/li][li]It’s not true that the three words have three different genders. _Frau_ is feminine, and the other two are neuter.[/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/24 "2011-09-17T20:43:54Z")
Thanks for painting in the picture. I feel I’m getting a better sense on how they’re used and perceived. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/25 "2011-09-17T20:47:53Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I wonder whether part of the problem is that we’re using “gender” for two different things: referring to entities that are actually male or female, and sorting entities into classes. ISTR reading that some language, possibly Hungarian, has 10 or fifteen “genders”. Some of those may be male or female, but the others? Narrow things, bumpy and wiggly things, blue things, things that are alive, things that fall, things that are on fire, who knows? “Gender” in the sense of male/female doesn’t really seem to apply here. That’s what I was thinking. They seem more like _categories_ of a sort, even though the lingo itself seems semantically gender-based. If we could somehow retro-fit the idea of “genders” to English; would it even help to clarify anything? In the same vein, would there be a way to remove genders from such languages and still have it make sense, or would you lose too much information, in most cases? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/26 "2011-09-17T20:53:09Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > In the same vein, would there be a way to remove genders from such languages and still have it make sense, or would you lose too much information, in most cases? Of course it’s possible to remove genders from languages. It’s already happened almost completely with English. Persian’s an example of a language which used to have grammatical gender but which has now completely lost it. I’m sure there are many others. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/27 "2011-09-17T21:04:49Z")
Ahh, I didn’t realize English used to be laden with genders. I know over time, it’s borrowed a lot of words from French and such, but I suppose that’s true with any language. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/28 "2011-09-17T21:07:02Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > Ahh, I didn’t realize English used to be laden with genders. Not only genders, but cases too! These are also almost completely gone. > [@](#): > > I know over time, it’s borrowed a lot of words from French and such, but I suppose that’s true with any language. I’m sure there are plenty of languages out there which haven’t borrow any words from French. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Fish\_Cheer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fish_cheer/32/17179_2.png) [@Fish\_Cheer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish_Cheer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/29 "2011-09-17T21:15:50Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Indeed… Dyirbal famously has a separate grammatical gender whose members are comprised primarily of “women, fire, and dangerous things”. Its other three genders are “animate objects and men”, “fruit and vegetables”, and “miscellaneous”. From one of the marvelous essays by Jorge Luis Borges, _The Analytical Language of John Wilkins_: > [@](#): > > These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled ‘Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge’. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/30 "2011-09-17T21:22:17Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > I’m sure there are plenty of languages out there which haven’t borrow any words from French. 😉 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/31 "2011-09-17T21:52:19Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > This brings up an interesting thought. As a native speaker of American English, and never having learned another language; for native speakers of languages that have grammatical genders, do those words color your perception of those things as vaguely masculine and feminine? According to [this _Cracked_ article](http://www.cracked.com/article_18823_5-insane-ways-words-can-control-your-mind_p2.html), research has shown that grammatical gender may colour our perception of objects (see point 1 and links therein). But as the article points out, this phenomenon can also be seen in English. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > So you might say something like, “La personne etait un homme. Elle est arrive hier soir”. Literally “The person is a man. She arrived last night.” That might not be grammatically incorrect, but it does sound wrong. I’d probably say “il est arrivé hier soir”, having the pronoun “il” refer to “homme” instead of “personne”. > [@](#): > > English entirely lacks grammatical gender. It does have semantic gender and this shows up in the third person singular pronouns and nowhere else. This is still a form of grammatical gender, but what we can say is that the grammatical gender system in English is largely degenerate. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/32 "2011-09-17T22:43:03Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > …I don’t imagine a schooner having a vagina. You have never been a sailor out to sea for 6 months. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/33 "2011-09-17T23:18:44Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I wonder whether part of the problem is that we’re using “gender” for two different things: referring to entities that are actually male or female, and sorting entities into classes. ISTR reading that some language, possibly Hungarian, has 10 or fifteen “genders”. Some of those may be male or female, but the others? Narrow things, bumpy and wiggly things, blue things, things that are alive, things that fall, things that are on fire, who knows? “Gender” in the sense of male/female doesn’t really seem to apply here. Swahili has [sixteen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language#Noun_classes). The general term you’re looking for is [noun class](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class). Grammatical gender is a particular type of noun class (though it seems not all linguists agree). English does have a noun case system of sorts. We use “he” or “she” to refer to humans and pets, “it” to refer to other animals. ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/34 "2011-09-18T01:44:00Z")
In those languages with grammatical gender, how does one decide which gender a word belongs to? A formal body or just common usage? With the examples above, it clearly has little to do with the object itself. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/35 "2011-09-18T02:00:20Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > In those languages with grammatical gender, how does one decide which gender a word belongs to? A formal body or just common usage? Turns out there’s [plenty of inconsistency](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005411.html). ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/36 "2011-09-18T03:52:20Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > In those languages with grammatical gender, how does one decide which gender a word belongs to? A formal body or just common usage? Usage, of course. That’s how everything having to do with language is determined. And of course usage may vary in time or in place. Here in Sherbrooke, for example, the word “bus” is apparently feminine, unlike in every other French-speaking place I’ve been. I’m still appalled by it after nearly five years. > [@tellyworth](#): > > Turns out there’s [plenty of inconsistency](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005411.html). In fairness, some of those words aren’t used very often. So most speakers have no reason to know their gender. ---
**Author:** ![J\_Cubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@J\_Cubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_Cubed)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/37 "2011-09-18T05:36:40Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Almost any English abstract noun ending in -ation has a Latin cognate in -atio, which calls for feminine modifiers. (Also -ition and -itio, now that I think about it.) Inspiratio, incarnatio, explanatio, duratio, natio, levitatio. > i Great, now I wonder if spells in the Harry Potter universe have grammatical gender. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/38 "2011-09-18T09:29:21Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > In fairness, some of those words aren’t used very often. So most speakers have no reason to know their gender. In German, there is widespread disagreement over the gender (and sometimes also spelling and pronunciation) for some very common nouns, such as the words for butter, pretzel, pepper, and rat. The preferred gender usually follows a geographical distribution. For example, here’s [a map of German-speaking Europe showing the distribution of the preferred gender and form of the word for pretzel](http://www.philhist.uni-augsburg.de/lehrstuehle/germanistik/sprachwissenschaft/ada/runde_7/f01c-d/), taken from the [Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA)](http://www.philhist.uni-augsburg.de/lehrstuehle/germanistik/sprachwissenschaft/ada/). You can see dozens of similar maps on that site by following the _Ergebnisse_ links on the left-hand menu. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/39 "2011-09-18T14:07:44Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > “It” is the neuter third person singular pronoun in English. However, French and Spanish do not have neuter gender, only masculine and feminine. Spanish actually does have a kind of neuter, used only for things that are abstract. “Lo que pasó es…” or “Lo bueno es…” The use of “lo” in this sense is kind of “that which is” which has no gender at all. (Note that this is distinct from the homonym “lo” as an object.) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614/40 "2011-09-18T14:43:56Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Spanish actually does have a kind of neuter, used only for things that are abstract. “Lo que pasó es…” or “Lo bueno es…” The use of “lo” in this sense is kind of “that which is” which has no gender at all. (Note that this is distinct from the homonym “lo” as an object.) So does French. “Ce” is used similarly to “lo” in Spanish. However, “ce” is considered one of the demonstrative pronouns. The English demonstrative pronounces are that, this, those, and these. Is lo actually considered one of the personal pronouns in Spanish? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-english-be-said-to-have-gender-nouns/596614.md?page=3)