# Origins of gendered nouns

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 5, 2018, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635 "2018-05-05T11:39:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 33

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2018, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/33 "2018-05-07T00:57:37Z")

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> [@Dr.Drake](#):
>
> Yes, but there are two scenarios here:
> 
> 1. Nouns are divded into two or three categories, which are then named “masculine” and “feminine” (and “neuter”)…  
> or,
> 2. Natural gender sets up the system …
> 
> There’s no evidence at all, and nouns can certainly switch gender between languages, dialects, and over time, but #1 seems to have fewer logical hurdles to leap than #2. You seem to be suggesting #2.

The development of noun classes is unclear and varies between languages. Instead of developing a marker to divide nouns into two classes, some gender systems probably arose via mergers from a multi-class or multi-classifier system. Thus the choice between your 1 and 2 is simplistic. Fortunately I wasn’t suggesting either of them — your comment is unrelated to any point I was making.

Note that many languages with two noun classes make an animate/inanimate distinction, not a male/female distinction. (The linguistic term ‘gender’ does NOT mean the classes are sex-based, just that noun class can influence accompanying adjectives. Since there was much confusion upthread, let me say explicitly: In languages where the ‘gender’ distinction is between animate and inanimate, linguists call the two genders ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, not ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’)

Proto-Indo-European is widely agreed to have had a two-gender, animate/inanimate, system. [Here’s a pdf which goes into much detail about gender in general and PIE in particular.](http://allegatifac.unipv.it/silvialuraghi/Gender%20FoL.pdf) It subsequently split into a 3-gender system (though some think feminine gender arose as a split-off from inanimate not animate\*); in various branches mergers led to different 2-gender systems or even, like in English, the disappearance of basic noun genders. \*- Since the terms ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ are imposed by present-day linguists, it may not be necessary to view this misogynistically!

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