Gender Was a Grammar Term for Centuries
Gender refers to social roles, and in grammar to noun classes. The grammatical sense is far older than the social one.
Gender refers to the social and cultural aspects of being a man, woman or another identity, and in grammar to the classes into which nouns are divided. The grammatical use came first by centuries, and it is often arbitrary: German has three genders, and the word for *girl* is neuter. Grammatical gender frequently has nothing to do with sex at all.
- Social and cultural identity. *Gender roles.*
- A grammatical class. *Feminine gender.*
- Gendered — marked by gender. *Gendered language.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | gender | Gender studies. |
| Plural | genders | Three genders. |
| Adjective | gendered | Gendered nouns. |
| Related | genre | A literary genre. |
| Related | genus | A biological genus. |
How it is used in a sentence
- German has three grammatical genders.Masculine, feminine and neuter.
- The word for girl is neuter in German.*Mädchen*, because of its diminutive ending.
- Gender and genre are the same word.Both from Latin *genus*, a kind.
Grammatical gender around the world
- Two genders — French, Spanish, Hebrew
- Three — German, Russian, Latin
- None — Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, and largely English
- Noun classes — Bantu languages have far more than three
- Arbitrary — assignment often follows word endings, not meaning
From Old French *gendre*, from Latin *genus*, a kind or class. English used it grammatically from the fourteenth century.
Are gender and genre related?
Yes. Both come from Latin *genus*, meaning a kind or category, arriving through different French forms.
Does English have grammatical gender?
Barely. Only the pronouns he, she and it carry it. Nouns themselves are not classified by gender.