5/06/2011

Natural Gender

English differs from all other major European languages in having adopted natural (rather than grammatical) gender. In studying other European languages the student must learn both the meaning of every noun and also its gender. In the Romance languages, for example, there are only two genders, and all nouns that would be neuter in English are there either masculine or feminine. Some help in these languages is afforded by distinctive endings that at times characterize the two classes. But even this aid is lacking in the Germanic languages, where the distribution of the three genders appears to the English student to be quite arbitrary. Thus in German sonne (sun) is feminine, mond (moon) is masculine, but kind (child), mädchen (maiden), and weib (wife) are neuter. The distinction must be constantly kept in mind, since it not only affects the reference of pronouns but also determines the form of inflection and the agreement of adjectives. In the English language all this was stripped away during the Middle English period, and today the gender of every noun in the dictionary is known instantly. Gender in.

English is determined by meaning. All nouns naming living creatures are masculine or feminine according to the sex of the individual, and all other nouns are neuter.

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