Why do we call some things “she” (such as ships, flags, cars, etc.), and do we call anything “he” (other than hurricanes, just to be pc)? Is there a linguistic history to this kind of gender designation?
Thanks!
Linda
Hey Linda, let me be the first (possibly) to welcome you to the SDMB. I couldn’t find a previous thread on this (but I would bet there is one).
My WAG is that “she” objects are designated as such because they were being talked about by males. For example, a sea captain from, say, the 16th century would almost invariably be male. Thus, he’s not too likely to refer to his life’s pride (the ship) as a “he”.
I’ll do some more work on this and get back to the thread. I open it up to the real SDMB geniuses.
I would second the WAG of AETBOND147.
In English, the “she” things referred to are almost always items owned by men. A ship, a car, etc.
Golfer Bobby Jones referred to his putter as “Calamity Jane.”
I just think a crusty old sea captain is going to have a hard time referring to the ship he is in charge of as “he.”
I believe that hurricanes were probably given women’s names only at the outset because the meteorologists were men. That practice didn’t start until after WWII however.
People usually seem to call cats “she”. I wonder why that is, particularly since I’ve never had any cat other than a
tomcat. My wife and I now have four neutered male cats, and
we call them “the boys”.
Do people call cats “she” because they are vaguely thought of as a more “feminine” pet (than dogs, presumably), or because they have higher voices than dogs? Or is it
because, as I am fairly certain, that the grammatical gender of “cat” in Old English was feminine? I can definitely say
it’s feminine in contemporary German, and the genders in Old English were almost always parallel to those of modern German.
Is there anyone who speaks another similar genderless language, I mean, other than English? I know that in Georgian (Caucasus Georgia), there are no genders either. All other languages I know about have two or three genders.
Cats, for instance, can be boys or girls, or both, depending on the masters language. I wonder who knows if “ship” is a “she” in Georgian or other genderless language?
IIRC, Japanese has no genders. In German, window is female, but girl is neuter. Go figure.
English is not genderless. The fact that “ship” is a “she” is a result. This effect is the only vestige of gender left in English, AFAIK.
Arjuna34
How it can be said that there is no gender in English. Why do we have words like “he” and “she”? Who do we “actor” and “actress”? “Widow” and “Widower”?
Or does gender in language refer to languages where the gender of the word is inherent in every single word?
Thanks for the welcome and the replies thus far. So if men were the first to call their (and other) objects “she,” did women just pick up on it and also refer to them that manner? I still wonder if any genderless object is called a “he.” Surely!
Proper names for places such as country names are also referred to as she in English, although the practice is not as common as it used to be.
In languages with true grammatical gender, adjectives must agree in gender with the nouns that they modify. Latin has three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. I found it interesting that the word for sailor, nauta, is feminine.
I believe that the gender of a word in Latin (and modern Romance languages) is more a function of the word itself than by the thing to which it refers. For example, words that end in a in the nominative singular (like nauta) tend to be feminine, those that end in us tend to be masculine.
The point about how Latin gender is a detirminant of the word itself is also true for the Spanish language. If a word ends in a then it is usually feminine and if it ends in o it is usually masculine. I say usually because there are always exceptions. However, in Irish Gaelic the detirmination of whether a noun is masculine or feminine is fairly random.
Here’s a thread that while not exactly the same as the OP in this thread still bears on the subject.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=39276
I think you need to distinguish between things that acquired a gender (i.e. ships) and gender in a language (i.e. feminine/masculine/neuter adjectives).
In the thread linked above it seemed to be the opinion that language gender evolved seemingly randomly. While some theories exist it’s hard to credit them. As DrMatrix noted out “Sailor” is drived from a feminine noun against all expectation.
As to javaman’s bit about cats I assume there is some sociological effect at work here…much the same as sailors referring to their ship as ‘she’. Women are sometimes described as being ‘catty’ while men are ‘dogs’ (or pigs). This seems to jibe with how men and women act (in a very vague and general sense). Women can hiss and act aloof while men are willing to hump anything…including other people’s legs.
Just for the record: the naming of hurricanes started out as a joke. Meteorologists (who were almost all men) started to name hurricanes after their wives and girlfriends. Eventually, all hurricanes were named after women. Eventually, of course, they threw in men’s names. Nowadays, they use page 234 of the Miami phone book 
My favorite male/female designation (which, of course, has fallen out of favor) is referring to cities as female. A hundred years ago politicians, newspaper writers and “city fathers” (hmmm… interesting term there) would always say things like, “We dedicate this statue as a gift to our glorious city and all her fine citizens…”
Not sure of the etymology of words and language as it pertains to gender of a given word but I can assure you that most words are not gender consistant from one language/culture to another.
For example:
russian: Lodka (boat) is female
french: [Le] Bateau (boat) is male
english: Boat is neuter (for most people) but female for us salty souls.
I believe that in the english laguage the gender of a word has more to do with a kind of romantic attribute we assign a given object more than any specific rule about it’s inherent gender like in the french or russian languages.
How the french and russian languages decided on the gender of words is a mystery to me. My guess, simple convention over ears of language development and use.
Apparently I have an opinion on language development but not the slightest idea about it’s correct spelling…
That should be… years of language…blah, blah, blah…
While I did take seriously and try to get the point of “ears of language” for a moment, the opinion is a good one. (P.S., it’s “its correct spelling…,” but I’m sure that was a typo. 
Yeah, a typo, that’s it! Their is no way I’d make such an obvious mistake out of ignorance.
BobT, yes.
Sometimes it’s self evident: in all languages, I know about (but, unfortunately, can’t speak), ‘penis’ is masculine and ‘vagina’ is feminine.(‘Clitoris’ can be masculine, but it’s a diffrerent thread :-).) In English, both are neutral. Yet, cities, countries ans ships are apparently feminine. Most animals are masculine, if not otherwise specified (zebra, girafe, fly).
In Russian, a small boat (lodka), a dinghy) is feminine, but a big one, like ‘USS Cole’, is masculine. A bra is masculine, panties, like in English, is plural. Nose is masculine, head is feminine, and ear is neutral. In Latin and modern European languages all these nouns are of different and often, unexpected gender. Why ‘night’ is feminine in French, Italian, Russian, ‘evening’ and ‘day’ are masculine I don’t know. In some languages, like in Spanish, there are rules based on endings, with many exceptions. In some, there are no rules or the exceptions make it very messy, especially for foreigners. In general, it’s very interesting topic.
So, what gender is a Japanese ship, country, city?
Finaly, English is genderless as far as most nouns do not have genders. Of course there is ‘he’ and ‘she’, because males and females have to be referred to. As do widows and widowers, husbands and wifes, boys and girls and even actor anr actresses.