Why and when did English stop using gender?

[Quercus]

@Svejk_1

Not sure what you’re saying here. Do you think French people refer to their baby girl as ‘il’, or that Germans refer to their baby boy as ‘es’?

Of course not. But if a French speaker was referring to a (non-specific) happy baby, they’d use the masculine forms of ‘a’ and ‘happy’, and if they subsequently referred to the (generic) baby, would likely use ‘il’. (as in “A happy baby rarely cries. He does so only when there is a problem.”)

I assume a German speaker would, in contrast, use the feminine forms.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Svejk_1

Thanks for the cite, it’s an interesting read. And I could see how Dutch might have simplified as a result of borrowing so much and being so heavily influenced from abroad. I wonder, though, if that link between morphological simplicity, on the one hand, and foreign influence, on the other, holds up in Slavic languages. There you see for instance that Bulgarian and Macedonian have basically lost the Slavic case system, which has remained in tact in all other Slavic languages. On the other end, Slovenian has retained not only its case system but also a full-fledged dual, which is only rudimentarily present in other Slavic languages; Czech continues to have a vocative which is only rudimentarily present in other Slavic languages. Would we find more loanwords in Bulgarian than in Slovenian or Czech? I should look that up in the book you posted as a cite.

Further contradictory evidence is found in Romanian, which has been somewhat isolated from other Romance languages and which has borrowed extensively from non-Romance languages in its region. Despite that, Romanian retains some case inflections which have been lost elsewhere, suggesting that some other factor in its development which led to their loss in its sister languages. Elsewhere in the IE language world, the secret to preserving inflection seems to have been that the speakers of a language were mostly isolated for centuries (Icelandic) or at least, they stayed in one place for millenia (Lithuanian) without being the center of a major empire or trade system.

The book I cited does have some surprising omissions; for instance it has Old High German but not contemporary German.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Oh come on, surely we’re not going to leave this untranslated?

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Rotkäppchen schlug die Augen auf, und als es sah, wie die Sonnenstrahlen durch die Bäume hin und her tanzten und alles voll schöner Blumen stand, dachte es: Wenn ich der Grossmutter einen frischen Strauss mitbringe, der wird ihr auch Freude machen; es ist so früh am Tag, dass ich doch zu rechter Zeit ankomme, lief vom Wege ab in den Wald hinein und suchte Blumen. Und wenn es eine gebrochen hatte, meinte es, weiter hinaus stände eine schönere, und lief danach und geriet immer tiefer in den Wald hinein.

LRRH opened [its] eyes, and as it saw how the sunbeams danced about through the trees and the pretty flowers were blooming, it thought: If I bring Grandmother a fresh bouquet it will cheer her up; it’s so early in the day that I’ll still get there on time. [It] ran off the trail into the forest looking for flowers. And no sooner did it pluck one flower than it noticed a prettier one further away, and went farther and farther into the woods.

[Svejk_1]

@Quercus

Of course not. But if a French speaker was referring to a (non-specific) happy baby, they’d use the masculine forms of ‘a’ and ‘happy’, and if they subsequently referred to the (generic) baby, would likely use ‘il’. (as in “A happy baby rarely cries. He does so only when there is a problem.”)

I assume a German speaker would, in contrast, use the feminine forms.

I’m not sure why you’re all “of course not”, as though my question is so silly, when the person that I addressed it to has actually said that yes, that is what they thought. Also, it’s already been pointed out that das Baby is neuter in German, so they’d be using the neuter es (it). But I’m not sure why you feel the need to be pointing that out tbh.