Gender
From UniLang Wiki
Gender
A classification of word (usually nouns and adjectives), primarily according to sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed quality associated with sex.
(from "Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)")
German, Russian, Faroese, Greek and Romanian are languages with three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.
In ancinet forms of Persian language such as Avestan (A.D. c. -2000 to -300), Old Persian (A.D. c. -600 to -300), Persian has had the three genders but since Middle Persian (A.D. c. -300 to +700), Persian doesn't have gender any longer.
Most Romance languages (such as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese) only have masculine and feminine.
In some Germanic languages (Dutch, Danish and Swedish, for instance), there is an opposition between neuter and common gender. Here common gender evolved to include both masculine and feminine gender.
It is usually said that five genders occur in Polish (masculine, feminine and neuter in singular; virile and non-virile in plural). See also: Polish genders
English doesn't use gender at all: every noun takes the definite article "the", and the pronouns "he", "she" and "it" depend on natural sex rather than grammatical gender. Chinese and Japanese also don't use gender to distinguish classes of nouns.
Translations
- Danish: køn n, genus n
- Dutch: geslacht n
- Faroese: kyn n
- German: Geschlecht n, Genus n
- Norwegian: kjøn n
- Swedish: genus n
- French: genre n
- Catalan: gènere m
- Italian: genere m
- Portuguese: gênero m
- Spanish: género m
- Persian: jens
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