# Why do most languages have Grammatical Gender on inanimate objects? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 24, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381 "2009-09-24T16:14:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/61 "2009-10-05T19:41:15Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Become = come to be. I always treated the _be-_ prefix as an (archaic?) method of creating verbs from other parts of speech: _bedeck, besiege, befriend, benight(ed)…_ The past participle _come_ is combined with this prefix to, yes, indicate something has “come to be”. ---
**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:** [October 6, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/62 "2009-10-06T03:09:39Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Å jänta å ja’, å jänta å ja’ > å allt uppå landavägen, å ja’, > å jänta å ja’, å jänta å ja’ > å allt uppå landavägen. > > ``` > Där mötte ja´ henn´ e môra så rar, > **då sola ho sken på himmalen så klar,** > å däjli som ljusan dagen ho var - > mett hjârte, hvar tog dä vägen? > > ``` > > 😃 Of course, that’s hardly an example of modern Swedish. Would you mind translating this for us? Or you could PM me if you want, but if I know the SDMB at all I’m not the only person here who would like to know. ---
**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:** [October 6, 2009, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/63 "2009-10-06T03:18:39Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Become = come to be. Oddly, in German _bekommen_ means “to get”, but only in the sense of receiving something. Apart from that, a German word formed of native elements often correspond closely to the unrelated Latinate English word meaning the same thing, e.g. [ul] [li] zurückwerfen (“back” + “throw” = “reject”)\*[/li][li] untertan (“under”+“done” = “sub-ject” (under thrown)[/li][li]zurückstellen (“back”+“put” = post-pone)[/li][li]and many, many more[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2009, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/64 "2009-10-06T11:07:12Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Would you mind translating this for us? Or you could PM me if you want, but if I know the SDMB at all I’m not the only person here who would like to know. Sure. I should start by mentioning that it’s a romantic/humorous song by Fredrik August Dahlgren, and was written sometime in the mid 1800s (I couldn’t find an exact date). The complete lyrics can be found [here](http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%85_j%C3%A4nta_%C3%A5_ja). Some parts of the translation are approximate (or even outright guesses). An’ the girl and I, an’ the girl and I an’ all up on the highway, and I, an’ the girl and I, an’ the girl and I an’ all up on the highway. (This verse, and the similar ones later in the song, establish the setting for the following verse.) There I met her a morning so sweet, when the sun, she shone on the sky so clear and beautiful as the day is bright she was - my heart, where did it go? I won’t translate the rest of the verses, except to say that they basically go: They look at eachother at church. They meet again at midsummer night’s eve. They dance. They make out in a meadow, and he proposes. They marry (in the same church, tying back to the second part). They walk together on the higway of life (tying back to the first part). Finally, [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXzJm1-QYTI)’s a rendition of the song on youtube, or so I assume (I’m on a public computer and can’t listen to it right now). ---
**Author:** ![rosemachinegun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3bc359/32.png) [@rosemachinegun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rosemachinegun)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/65 "2010-03-07T20:17:42Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > Something along those lines that’s always baffled me is the English/French come/venir and become/devenir. In meaning, become has nothing to do with come. Be-/de- aren’t considered prefixes in this case. And the English and French words are not cognates and look nothing alike. Yet both become and devenir contain come and venir, respectively. > > Something else that’s interesting but less puzzling is that the French word demander means ask but looks like demand, complete opposites. I could see how that could come about but it’s confusing nonetheless. Actually, if you believe this [wiktionary.com](http://wiktionary.com) etymology, [venio - Wiktionary, the free dictionary](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/venio#Latin) Come and Venir are indeed cognates, both deriving from the PIE root \*gʷem. It’s not uncommon for cognates to look nothing alike, sound changes do a hell of a job to these siblings. One of my favorites pairs is French “cher”(Latin “carus”) and English “whore”, both deriving from a root meaning dear or expensive. 😃 It is a fascinating coincidence that become and devenir came to have the same meaning like that though. I wonder if they influenced each other? As for “demander”. Loanwords just love to take a life of their own don’t they? The Japanese really do a great job with it, they sometimes make our little semantic alterations to demander blush. They came up with “virgin road” as a word for “wedding aisle”. ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/66 "2010-03-07T21:26:31Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Yes, a lot about Modern English is explained if you think of it as derived from a creolisation of Old English and Anglo Norman French (with a little Medieval Latin thrown into the mix). However, this theory is somewhat controversial. English is not a creole! I’ve seen this repeated over and over here on the SDMB. English does not fulfil the requirements to be a creole; a creole is what a pidgin becomes when it gets native speakers. English is a Germanic language that imported a lot of vocabulary from other languages, mostly notably Latin, French, and Greek, but that does not make it a creole. English doesn’t display the characteristics associated with creoles, such as copula deletion, changes in the tense/aspect systems, simplified grammar, etc. English has absorbed vocabulary, but its underlying structure has remained Germanic. I suggest checking out Andrei Danchov, \*The Middle English creolization hypothesis revisited \*(Studies in Middle English Linguistics, 1997) for more information. ---
**Author:** ![F.Pu-du-he-pa-as](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c89c15/32.png) [@F.Pu-du-he-pa-as](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.Pu-du-he-pa-as)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/67 "2010-03-07T23:32:57Z")
The OP first asserts that most languages, including all the languages in Europe except English, have gender marking: > [@](#): > > Why do most languages have Grammatical Gender on inanimate objects? > According to linguist John McWhorter, “English is the only language in all of Europe that has no gender marking of the le crayon/ la plume type” (From: Doing our own thing (2003)". ) It is not true that most extant languages have gender marking, and, in fact, the number of languages which do/do not mark gender is closer to 50/50. This can be easily verified by looking at the World Atlas of Language Structures’ discussion [“Number of Genders”](http://wals.info/feature/30) and the [accompanying map](http://wals.info/feature/30?tg_format=map&v1=cfff&v2=cff0&v3=cf60&v4=cd00&v5=c000&s=20&z4=3000&z5=2999&z3=2998&z2=2997&z1=2996). As you can see, 145 of the languages included in the study have no grammatical gender, while 112 languages have two or more genders. Also, English is not the only language in all of Europe which has no gender marking. Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, and (depending on whether you still count this as Europe or not) Chuvash, Georgian, Eastern Armenian, and Lezgian have no gender marking. Also note that English is counted as having three genders. The authors state that they define gender marking through the presence of gender agreement-- so the fact that some nouns in English agree with the pronoun “he,” some with the pronoun “she,” and some with the pronoun “it,” is sufficient evidence for gender marking. The fact that we do not have gender marking on the definite/indefinite article (“the le crayon/ la plume type” the author mentions) is, on its own, irrelevant to the question of whether a language shows gender marking. Whether the definite/indefinite article shows gender agreement is not as interesting of a linguistic question. The OP then goes on to ask why certain nouns got assigned to certain genders when there is no obvious rationale for it, and how and why grammatical gender originated: > [@](#): > > I realize that languages are not perfect, and many times there is no real reason behind usage. Nonetheless, the one thing I just can’t understand is why every European language besides English has inanimate objects as female or masculine? [snip] But overall, why did early man begin this gender assignment of what are in reality (dare I say) neuter-gendered inanimate objects, such as “keys” or “door”? And why has no language in Europe ever dropped this arbitrary (and if I dare say, to English speakers learning these other languages, inexplicable) gender assignment? This must be the biggest thing in other European languages that strikes modern English speakers as odd. Is there any explanation as to why the ancients started this? I only know of one example of a language developing an additional grammatical gender, and that is Proto Indo-European. Most ancient Indo-European languages show a three-way distinction in grammatical gender, between masculine, feminine, and neuter. Languages in the Anatolian branch of Indo-European (for example, Hittite, Luvian, Lycian, Lydian, and others) show a two-way grammatical distinction, between animate and inanimate (=neuter). It appears that only animate nouns could act as the subjects of transitive verbs, inanimate nouns could not. You have to admit that this distinction makes some sort of sense-- inanimate objects generally don’t perform actions, so why should they ever appear as the subjects of transitive verbs? It appears that the feminine gender had its ultimate origins as a kind of suffix, which then somehow went on to develop into a full-fledged gender. There are several candidates for this suffix, but it is not known which one it was or how it developed into a full-fledged gender. The development of this new gender was kind of messy around the edges; some nouns with this suffix turned out as masculines (for example, Latin first declension masculines, like nauta, agricola, and so on), and many stem types never developed a distinction in form between masculines and feminines in the daughter languages. So, to answer your question more directly-- in the one historical linguistic example I know, the idea of “gender” per se probably had nothing to do with the development of grammatical gender. In Indo-European, at least, what later became gender distinctions first started out with some _completely different_ grammatical function, and then developed into separate classes of nouns later on. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/68 "2010-03-08T18:06:39Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > If we’re going to be involving other languages… Latin is generally considered to have six tenses. The verb voco, in those tenses (for simplicity, only the first person singular indicative forms): > > voco, vocabam, vocabo, vocavi, vocaveram, vocavero > > Those are the active forms. Let us also look at the equivalent passive forms: > > vocor, vocabar, vocabor, **vocatus sum** , **vocatus eram** , **vocatus ero** > > Is it your opinion that Latin only has three tenses in the passive voice, even though those verb phrases correspond precisely in meaning to their one-word active brethren? Is that really the more useful and informative way of looking at it? > > There’s nothing special about single word versus a verb phrase. If we so desired, we could delete the space and say that havecalled is the tense formed by adding the prefix “have-”. To be fair, even the Roman grammarians recognized the passive perfect forms as “periphrastics”. Also, if the perfect passive forms are tenses, what about the future active/passive periphrastics (_vocaturus sum/eram/ero_ and _vocandus sum/eram/ero_), which are not generally described as separate tenses in Latin? Finally, there is the Late Latin imitation of Greek participles in forms like _vocans sum_–not classical, I grant, but spoken and recognized nonetheless. It’s probably a semantic difference–and there is no real problem identifying _vocatus sum_ as the passive equivalent of the perfect indicative _vocavi_–but it’s one the Romans themselves felt to a certain degree. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/69 "2010-03-08T18:18:39Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#): > > English is not a creole! I’ve seen this repeated over and over here on the SDMB. English does not fulfil the requirements to be a creole; a creole is what a pidgin becomes when it gets native speakers. English is a Germanic language that imported a lot of vocabulary from other languages, mostly notably Latin, French, and Greek, but that does not make it a creole. English doesn’t display the characteristics associated with creoles, such as copula deletion, changes in the tense/aspect systems, simplified grammar, etc. English has absorbed vocabulary, but its underlying structure has remained Germanic. I suggest checking out Andrei Danchov, \*The Middle English creolization hypothesis revisited \*(Studies in Middle English Linguistics, 1997) for more information. English, compared with Anglo-Saxon, shows a simplified tense system, simplified noun cases, and a changed grammar (importance of word order in particular). The underlying structure remains German because the creolization hypothesis is between two German languages: [Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_language#Norse_influence). There is no debate about whether those changes or the Norse influence happened, the only debate is whether it’s useful to call those changes “creolization” or not. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/70 "2010-03-08T18:29:51Z")
> [@F.Pu-du-he-pa-as](#): > > Also note that English is counted as having three genders. The authors state that they define gender marking through the presence of gender agreement-- so the fact that some nouns in English agree with the pronoun “he,” some with the pronoun “she,” and some with the pronoun “it,” is sufficient evidence for gender marking. The fact that we do not have gender marking on the definite/indefinite article (“the le crayon/ la plume type” the author mentions) is, on its own, irrelevant to the question of whether a language shows gender marking. Whether the definite/indefinite article shows gender agreement is not as interesting of a linguistic question. I don’t think that it’s true that “some nouns in English agree with the pronoun ‘he,’ some with the pronoun ‘she,’ and some with the pronoun ‘it’”. What pronoun you use is not determined by the noun, but by the meaning of the noun, and nouns with various meanings can be associated with different pronouns. Of course, most English nouns go predominantly with one pronoun: e.g., “queen” goes predominantly with “she”. However, if “queen” does not mean a female monarch or consort, the word can go with “he” or “it”, e.g., “He’s a drama queen,” or “Take the queen: it’s not protected.” There’s more gender in the Japanese language, and Japanese is generally counted as having no grammatical gender. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/71 "2010-03-08T19:19:12Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > There are no specific dictionary words (are there?) that have an assigned neuter gender. It’s only every really used in the abstract, but I’d certainly never say that it’s only _rarely_ used, at least in Mexico. “Lo que pasó es…” and similar constructs are pretty common. “Lo” doesn’t appear in your dictionary? You need a new dictionary! ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/72 "2010-03-08T20:36:36Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > English, compared with Anglo-Saxon, shows a simplified tense system, simplified noun cases, and a changed grammar (importance of word order in particular). The underlying structure remains German because the creolization hypothesis is between two German languages: [Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_language#Norse_influence). There is no debate about whether those changes or the Norse influence happened, the only debate is whether it’s useful to call those changes “creolization” or not. Creolization implies that at some point there was a break in continuity, rendering English a pidgin, which then developed into a creole. Can you cite any linguistic or historical authority stating that at the time English encountered Old Norse, Norman French, or any other language, that there was a break in continuity and that the speakers developed a pidgin (contact language), which become a creole, which is known as English? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/73 "2010-03-08T21:08:34Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#): > > Creolization implies that at some point there was a break in continuity, rendering English a pidgin, which then developed into a creole. Can you cite any linguistic or historical authority stating that at the time English encountered Old Norse, Norman French, or any other language, that there was a break in continuity and that the speakers developed a pidgin (contact language), which become a creole, which is known as English? The break in continuity is attested to by the dramatic difference in verb and noun endings and sentence structure of English from before Norse contact and from after. That discontinuity was accompanied by an influx of Norse words. I don’t know specifically if a pidgin was formed, but the starting point and end point match what creolization does–two languages in close contact result in one language with simplified endings and a changed sentence structure. So if the process was not creolization, there needs to be another explanation of how and why all the changes took place. I have not seen plausible alternatives, but I’ve been out of school for quite a while. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/74 "2010-03-08T21:28:10Z")
I didn’t read all the posts, but it seems that everybody is evading the answer to the OP’s question viz. “_Why are some objects given a masculin/feminin/neuter gender_” (irrelevant of the language). I don’t have the answer either, but I’m also puzzled by the fact that the same object is given a different gender in different languages: French _la tête_, German \*der Kopf \*(head) French _la couronne_, German \*der Kranz \*(crown) French _le nez_, Spanish _la nariz_ (nose) French _la mer_, Italian _il mare_ (sea) and many others Also in English _cat_ and _ship_ are (sometimes ?) feminin ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/75 "2010-03-08T21:30:25Z")
Language contact has many outcomes, many of which involve simplified morphology. Creolization is just one extreme outcome. There is no evidence that English was ever a creole. And the hypothesis that it was one came about during a time when people were saying just about every language was a creole. The current research does not support this hypothesis. Usually, creolization comes about when speakers of _at least two different languages_ try to learn a third language. (The most current research does not agree that there needs to be an intermediate pidgin that is learned by children, by the way). A creole needs a lexifier and substrate languages. What language is responsible for the lexicon of English? And what did the other language(s) give to English? And a completely new language must result, not a kinda restructured version of one of the original. Most of all, the social situation needed for a creole was not there, as far as I can tell. Most dramatically, creoles arise in plantations, where there are extreme differences in power and the powerless speak many different languages and do not have much access to the language of power. This difference of power and lack of access are pretty much key to any creole genesis (the latter more so than the former), though it need not be as extreme as a plantation. Simplification of English is most likely the result of either a) regular old language change or b) regular old language contact. Also, your wikipedia cite hypothesizes a _mixed language_ resulted, rather than a creole. I can’t believe this thread was dug up, and the discussion on the first page about this tangent was, seemingly, ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/76 "2010-03-08T22:09:32Z")
> [@Gymnopithys](#): > > I don’t have the answer either, but I’m also puzzled by the fact that the same object is given a different gender in different languages The thing is that in the languages that you give as examples (French, German, Italian, Spanish), it’s not objects but words which have gender. English-speakers are often confused by this, because for them objects have gender. For example, for Germans “Kind” (= child) is always neuter, regardless of the gender of the child being talked about. In English, a child can be “he”, “she” or “it”, depending on which particular child you are talking about. (An example of “it”: the conversation, “Mrs Jones just had a child. – Oh, what sex is it?”). In German, “ein Kind” is always “es” (it), never “er” (he) or “sie” (she). And “ein Mädchen” (girl) is always “es” (it), even though the speaker knows that all girls are biologically female, because words ending in -chen are always neuter in German. So the same object can have different grammatical gender in the same language, if you are using a different word to refer to it. For example, in French I could refer to myself as “un homme” (man - masculine) or “une personne” (person - feminine). It has nothing to do with my biological gender. ---
**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:** [March 8, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/77 "2010-03-08T22:17:29Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > “Lo” doesn’t appear in your dictionary? You need a new dictionary! 😛 You know what I meant… there are no nouns that are assigned a neuter gender, even though in (Mexican-) Spanish the concept of the neuter is certainly not rare. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/78 "2010-03-08T22:17:33Z")
> [@liberty3701](#): > > Usually, creolization comes about when speakers of > _at least two different languages_ try to learn a third language. I have never heard of creolization requiring three languages. > [@](#): > > A creole needs a lexifier and substrate languages. What language is responsible for the lexicon of English? And what did the other language(s) give to English? And a completely new language must result, not a kinda restructured version of one of the original. The substrate was Anglo-Saxon and the lexifier was Old Norse, although since the languages are both Germanic, the distinctions can be slight. The new language was English spoken after the Norse incursions and before the Norman invasion. The new language had different verb and noun endings and a modified sentence structure. > [@](#): > > Most of all, the social situation needed for a creole was not there, as far as I can tell. The Norse conquered a large portion of the British Isles. They were definitely a ruling class over the Anglo-Saxon population. > [@](#): > > Simplification of English is most likely the result of either a) regular old language change or b) regular old language contact. Neither of those hypotheses can explain why English is unique among European languages in losing its verb and noun endings in a short time frame. > [@](#): > > Also, your wikipedia cite hypothesizes a _mixed language_ resulted, rather than a creole. A distinction without a difference. English looks like a creole and the creolization process is the simplest explanation for the changes. > [@](#): > > I can’t believe this thread was dug up, and the discussion on the first page about this tangent was, seemingly, ignored. Yeah, I didn’t realize it was so old. The mods will close it if the zombie odor is too stiff. ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381/79 "2010-03-08T22:56:22Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I have never heard of creolization requiring three languages. That’s a pretty standard interpretation since Whinnon came up with it in in the 1970s. There is no creole (that everybody agrees is a creole) that has less than two substrate languages. And if everyone of one group speaks the same language, they can all speak to each other and do not need to use the language of the other group, thus getting rid of the prime motivation for creolization. > [@](#): > > The Norse conquered a large portion of the British Isles. They were definitely a ruling class over the Anglo-Saxon population. But what about access? Did the Anglo-Saxons have access to Norse? > [@](#): > > Neither of those hypotheses can explain why English is unique among European languages in losing its verb and noun endings in a short time frame. English may be unique among European languages, but I can guarantee you it is not unique among the world’s languages. > [@](#): > > A distinction without a difference. English looks like a creole and the creolization process is the simplest explanation for the changes. I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say here, but a mixed language is much different than a creole. Mixed languages take the syntax of one language and apply the lexicon of another. And English does not look like a creole. Even if we do not buy Bickerton’s Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, creoles have stuff in common that English does not. Morphology was not entirely wiped out. The Anglo-Saxon lexicon was not wiped out. English tense, mood, and aspect are different than any other creole. Creolization is far from the simplest explanation. Creolization is, in fact, incredibly complex. Language contact, however, happens everyday and has similar results of morphological simplification. But, I’ll let true experts weigh in, Sarah Thomason and Terrance Kaufman, in _Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics_, page 264, “There does not seem to be any reason to believe that the degree of change exhibited in English [during the Danelaw] is anything other than normal.”(Though I should admit that I don’t have the book on me, so they may go on to say something that refutes this or something, but I think this speaks pretty clearly.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-most-languages-have-grammatical-gender-on-inanimate-objects/511381.md?page=3)