# Was there ever a good reason for male, female, neuter in languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 13, 2006, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785 "2006-01-13T05:25:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/21 "2006-01-13T22:35:45Z")
> [@](#): > > This is interesting purely from a linguistics point of view, but doesn’t the use of gender to accomplish this betray something about the thought processes of peoples who developed early languages? It sounds like this is an after-the-fact analysis of how this structure has become useful and therefore persisted, rather than how it arose. In Indo-European, at least, it very likely arose by dividing things up into “male” (such as “man”, “chief”, “bull”, “god”) and “not male” (such as “woman”, “cow”, “goddess”). It’s only later that gender started being arbitrary. ---
**Author:** ![ombre3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/da6949/32.png) [@ombre3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ombre3)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/22 "2006-01-13T22:44:53Z")
Neuter for a tree and a leaf? Not in French in any case. Probably not in most romance languages. Un arbre--------Une feuille. So why, in some long ago time, did anybody scratching for survival BOTHER with determining whether a leaf was a girly girl and a tree was a macho man? Had they not better things to do---------or was it just cabin crazies in the wintertime? ---
**Author:** ![ombre3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/da6949/32.png) [@ombre3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ombre3)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/23 "2006-01-13T22:47:14Z")
> [@ombre3](#): > > Neuter for a tree and a leaf? > > Not in French in any case. Probably not in most romance languages. > > Un arbre--------Une feuille. > > So why, in some long ago time, did anybody scratching for survival BOTHER with determining whether a leaf was a girly girl and a tree was a macho man? > > Had they not better things to do---------or was it just cabin crazies in the wintertime? Sorry -------was quoting an earlier post stating that leaf and tree were neuter. Absurd. Seemed to have lost that quote. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/24 "2006-01-13T23:14:16Z")
> [@](#): > > So why, in some long ago time, did anybody scratching for survival BOTHER with determining whether a leaf was a girly girl and a tree was a macho man? > > Had they not better things to do---------or was it just cabin crazies in the wintertime? They didn’t sit down and assign gender to nouns. The fact that “feuille” is feminine in French is happenstance – it comes from the Latin word “folium”, which is neuter. What happened is that the plural of “folium”, which was “folia”, was interpreted as being a singular feminine noun, rather than a plural neuter noun. “arbre” in French is masculine simply because the Latin word “arbor” is. I don’t believe the etymology of “arbor” has been traced further back than Latin. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/25 "2006-01-13T23:41:55Z")
> [@tschild](#): > > In the instance of German, gender seems to get assigned mostly by analogy to existent word with the same ending. For example, _Computer_ is masculine because German nouns ending on -er usually are masculine. Rules of that kind are indeed helpful to foreign speakers of German like me, and the hard-and-fast, 100% consistant rules, such as _-ung_ being feminine and diminutives being neuter. **Ombre** , the use of the word _gender_ to refer to noun classes is more or less arbitrary. The word is related to _genus_, signifying a group of closely related things without any reference to biological sex. Grammatical genders in languages like German and Latin are simply classes of nouns. Swahili, IIRC, has six grammatical genders, but it doesn’t mean that they have six distinct gender identifications for people and animals. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/26 "2006-01-13T23:48:07Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > In Indo-European, at least, it very likely arose by dividing things up into “male” (such as “man”, “chief”, “bull”, “god”) and “not male” (such as “woman”, “cow”, “goddess”). It’s only later that gender started being arbitrary. If I follow you, what this implies is that a conscious effort of grammatical gender assignments had to take place at some time, which is inconsistent with the notion of language as a natural pheonenon. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/27 "2006-01-14T11:32:43Z")
> [@ombre3](#): > > Sorry -------was quoting an earlier post stating that leaf and tree were neuter. Absurd. > > Seemed to have lost that quote. Twas my post. And I’m sure it’s absurd, in French. In Norwegian it’s fact. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/28 "2006-01-14T12:39:13Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > If I follow you, what this implies is that a conscious effort of grammatical gender assignments had to take place at some time, which is inconsistent with the notion of language as a natural pheonenon. Don’t think **yBeayf** is saying that “conscious effort of grammatical gender assignments” had taken place. Rather, he/she seems to be saying that at one time, way back when, noun classification was likely based on natural gender (with inanimate objects all belonging to one class together, too), the way English pronouns are. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/29 "2006-01-14T12:59:58Z")
While we’re on the subject, how much crossover is there between genders in Germanic languages and those of Romance languages? My unresearched guess would say that fundamental words such as fire, water, food, would tend to have the same gender between the two groups, with diminishing coincidence the more modern the words become. Am I even partially right? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/30 "2006-01-14T14:34:38Z")
Grammatical gender developed in proto-Indo-European. At first there seems to have been an earlier noun class division based on different criteria than masculine and feminine. Something about the distinction between static and moving, there being two proto-Indo-European roots for ‘fire’, for example: \*_pur-_ and \*_egnis_. One theory is that the noun classes which later came to be called “masculine” and “neuter” were originally moving and static, respectively. What came to be called “feminine” originated as a plural or collective form of other nouns. Eventually concepts of feminine and masculine, somehow connected with female and male bio forms or social roles, were mapped onto the underlying noun classes based on motion or collectivity. Why a connection was drawn between the original concepts and sex roles is the $64,000 question. Some sort of personification, as posters in this thread have suggested. The time depth of the development under discussion is Neolithic, and when speculating on this I look to shamanistic thought for drawing symbolic connections between the microcosm of the human being and the macrocosm of nature and everything in it. Note: the IE roots given by Pokorny’s _Indogermanische Wörterbuch_ are cited without any grammatical endings, so they do not show gender. The entries in Mann’s _A Comparative Indo-European Dictionary_ are cited in full reconstructed form, complete with feminine, masculine, and neuter gender endings in the nominative case. > [@jjimm](#): > > My unresearched guess would say that fundamental words such as fire, water, food, would tend to have the same gender between the two groups, with diminishing coincidence the more modern the words become. ```auto English German Latin Italian fire Feuer n. ignis m. fuoco m. water Wasser n. aqua f. acqua f. food Essen n. cibus m. cibo m. ``` Italian doesn’t do neuter. _Fuoco_ came from Latin _focus_, which means not fire but fireplace. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/31 "2006-01-14T14:37:04Z")
> [@naita](#): > > Twas my post. And I’m sure it’s absurd, in French. In Norwegian it’s fact. 😃 But Norwegian is virtually unique, in being the one language, other than Bahasa Indonesia, that was invented and has become the “birth language” of a significant population. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/32 "2006-01-14T15:07:05Z")
Actually, **jjimm** , good thing you asked for a diachronic gender study and gave fire as an example. Look at how German _Feuer_ and its Greek cognate πυρ _pyr_ are both neuter. While Latin _ignis_ is masculine, and in Vedic Sanskrit it was _Agni_ who got to be a god, a masculine god of course. This shows the proto-IE distinction between moving fire like lambent flame and static fire like embers. However, in Lithuanian, the cognate _ugnis_ is feminine. But then also in Lithuanian _saule_ ‘sun’ is feminine and _menuo_ ‘moon’ is masculine, unlike most other IE languages except German _Sonne_ (f.), _Mond_ (m.). But in Sanskrit both _surya_ ‘sun’ and _soma_ ‘moon’ are masculine as are all the planets, even Venus _shukra_. Semitic Sun: in Arabic _shams_ is feminine, while in Hebrew _shemesh_ is masculine. Semitic Moon: in Arabic _qamar_ is masculine, while in Hebrew _levonah_ is feminine. \*\*So… go figure. \*\* > [@Polycarp](#): > > But Norwegian is virtually unique, in being the one language, other than Bahasa Indonesia, that was invented and has become the “birth language” of a significant population. There’s been a new one added; since the 1990s “Bosnian” has been invented. What this means is Danish, Malay, and Serbo-Croatian hived off new language identities even though the language is still pretty much the same. Oh, BTW, you can say the same for Dari and Tajik with respect to Persian, although those are old alternative names for regional forms of Persian, not new inventions. As for Hindi, the name Hindi was used for a group of North Indian dialects of modern central Indo-Aryan since the Middle Ages, but the name “Hindi” used for a hive-off of Delhi Hindustani formed as a modern literary standard language called “Hindi,” only dates to the 19th century. The other literary variant of Hindustani being known as Urdu. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/33 "2006-01-14T15:42:28Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > But Norwegian is virtually unique, in being the one language, other than Bahasa Indonesia, that was invented and has become the “birth language” of a significant population. That’s an odd way to look at it. What do you think people in Norway spoke in the early 1800s? Sure, we now have two official forms of written Norwegian that emerged through the efforts of just a handful of people, but they were based on what people actually spoke at the time. “Nynorsk” (new Norwegian) on a selection of mainly western Norwegian dialects, and “bokmål” (book Norwegian) on the “educated” language with the heaviest Danish influence. Nothing I know of in those written languages was non-existent in the language of Norwegians at the time, so I don’t really see how “invented” applies. And even if Norwegian was invented, tree and leaf are neuter in Danish and Swedish. ---
**Author:** ![Ty\_Cobb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ee59a6/32.png) [@Ty\_Cobb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ty_Cobb)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/34 "2006-01-14T17:15:51Z")
No These distinctions were always (and are currently) caused by the mergers of languages in border areas. Just as people near Quebec will speak Franglais and near Mexico Spanglish, there were many mergers around the world and across the ages. In English today we will often honor Greek-root words with Greek plurals, and inflect French words like fiancé, fiancée, blond and blonde. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/35 "2006-01-14T18:04:53Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Actually, **jjimm** , good thing you asked for a diachronic gender study… Did I? Cool. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/36 "2006-01-16T10:48:50Z")
I believe **Polycarp** may have been thinking of Nynorsk when describing Norwegian as an “invented” language. Remember the original Latin verb that _invent_ was derived from originally meant ‘find’. Maye it could be said Nynorsk was a “found language” in the sense of “found art.” > [@naita](#): > > “Nynorsk” (new Norwegian) on a selection of mainly western Norwegian dialects Right there. As you said, it was a “selection.” Who did the job of selecting, standardizing, working the raw material into a usable national idiom? Norwegian nationalist scholars, mainly Ivar Aasen. A considerable amount of work went into it. Finding the forms that were best shared across dialects, as a criterion of which forms and words to select for the finished product. This is known as language planning or even language engineering. When I said that Norwegian was “hived off” like a swarm of bees starting a new hive, as a new linguistic identity different from Danish, obviously I was thinking of Bokmål. Thanks for reminding us to not confuse the two. **jjimm** , diachronic means ‘across time’. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/37 "2006-01-16T14:21:17Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > But Norwegian is virtually unique, in being the one language, other than Bahasa Indonesia, that was invented and has become the “birth language” of a significant population. Can you clarify what you mean by that wrt Norwegian? I assume you mean calling it Norweigian instead of Danish (or Dano-Norweiian), and are not referring to usual catagorization of the two main dialects: Nynorsk and Bokmal (per **Naita** ’s post). If that’s the case, then this sort of thing happens all the time. Romanian/Moldovan comes to mind as does Serbian and Croatian. I’m sure you know the old saying that a language is just a dialect with an army. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/38 "2006-01-16T14:23:27Z")
Yikes, those were some bad typos! **Norwegian** , not Norweigian or Norweiian… :smack: ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/39 "2006-01-16T18:34:24Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > I believe **Polycarp** may have been thinking of Nynorsk when describing Norwegian as an “invented” language. Remember the original Latin verb that _invent_ was derived from originally meant ‘find’. Maye it could be said Nynorsk was a “found language” in the sense of "found art."Right there. As you said, it was a “selection.” Who did the job of selecting, standardizing, working the raw material into a usable national idiom? Norwegian nationalist scholars, mainly Ivar Aasen. A considerable amount of work went into it. Finding the forms that were best shared across dialects, as a criterion of which forms and words to select for the finished product. This is known as language planning or even language engineering. > > When I said that Norwegian was “hived off” like a swarm of bees starting a new hive, as a new linguistic identity different from Danish, obviously I was thinking of Bokmål. Thanks for reminding us to not confuse the two. > > **jjimm** , diachronic means ‘across time’. I still think calling it either an invented or found _language_ confuses writing norms and languages. Norwegian spoken dialects have of course been influenced by whichever written norm applies in the area, but they still survive with significant differences from those norms. The written norms have been altered as well, to reflect spoken language better. My real point being while people _wrote_ Danish before the 20th century, and Ivar Aasen can be said to have invented Nynorsk, the average person _spoke_ Norwegian, then and now. Phew, this makes me want to write a lot about Norwegian counting while camouflaging it as a question. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785/40 "2006-01-18T10:53:55Z")
Regarding grammatical gender I have hit on one example where it is really vital. It involves an instance of nouns that differ only in gender not spelling (such as French _le tour_/_la tour_). In German _Leiter_ f. = ladder _Leiter_ m. = leader, supervisor, boss, (electrical) conductor. Hence: _Bitte stellen Sie die Leiter an die Wand_ = Please lean the ladder against the wall. _Bitte stellen Sie den Leiter an die Wand_ = Please have the boss executed by firing squad. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-ever-a-good-reason-for-male-female-neuter-in-languages/339785.md?page=3)