When I started learning Latin, I was surprised to discovered that I needed to memorize the gender to which each noun belonged. I had no idea that some languages categorized nouns by gender, which determined the article or possessive pronoun used to refer to the noun.
Some of these genders were intuitive, for example, in Latin, boy and man are both masculine nouns, while girl and woman are both feminine nouns, however, I couldn’t always rely on logic and intuition, especially in the case of German, which defines boy and man as masculine nouns, woman as a feminine noun, but girl is a neuter noun! Furthermore, why does German say a table is masculine, a car is neuter, but a newspaper is most definitely feminine?
After many tiring lessons trying to comprehend the seemingly illogical world of gendered nouns in foreign languages, I took comfort in the fact that I could retreat to English where all nouns — except those that refer to beings with a biological gender (i.e. humans, animals, and plants) — are absolutely neuter… or could I?
Yet again, I was astounded to discover that English — the language I have been using my entire life, which I believed did not have those nonsensical gendered nouns — had, and still technically has, gendered nouns.
That’s right, English had gendered nouns! When you go back to Old English, each noun would have a different article based on its gender. Here is an example:
Masculine Nouns in Old English
| Modern English | Old English |
|---|---|
| The Man | Se Wer |
| The Boy | Se Geonga |
Feminine Nouns in Old English
| Modern English | Old English |
|---|---|
| The Woman | Séo Frówe |
| The Door | Séo Duru |
Neuter Nouns in Old English
| Modern English | Old English |
|---|---|
| The Girl | Þæt Mægden |
| The House | Þæt Hús |
I’ve said it several times before, but it is still amazing to see just how much Old English resembled German. Just like German, Old English apparently also defined its words for man and boy as masculine, its word for woman as feminine, and its word for girl as neuter.
Also, the spelling and pronunciation of most of these nouns in Old English are very similar to their spelling and pronunciation in German — the Old English geonga and the German Junge are pronounced almost the same way, the Old English frówe is nearly identical to the German Frau, and the Old English mægden is not only related to the German Mädchen, but also the Modern English maiden.
By the time that Modern English became the most commonly spoken version of English, only the neuter form of each article was used to refer to each noun, regardless of the noun’s gender.
There are, however, some nouns that still exist in English which do have a gender, besides the naturally gendered nouns, such as man and woman.
Gendered Nouns in Modern English
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|
| Blond | Blonde |
| Fiancé | Fiancée |
The two examples I presented both came from French, which is from where their attribute of gender distinction comes. Therefore, if you wanted to use these words properly, you would say that someone who is engaged to a man has a fiancé, whereas someone who is engaged to a woman has a fiancée, although these words are pronounced the same; you’d also have to refer to men as blond and women as blonde.
What do you think about gendered nouns?
Onward American 