# Genders of Latin nouns/ What percentage of each?



## Peano

I would like to know any available statistics on the genders of Latin nouns, something like this: 

% of feminine gender nouns
% of masculine gender nouns
% of neuter gender nouns

And, if it is possible, also subdivided by declension.
ualete.


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## Cagey

Do you want to know the percentage of personal names in each category?  Or do you want to know the percentage of nouns in each category?

I am not certain that we have the information in any case but we should start with clarity about the question.


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## Peano

My question is in relation with the auxiliary language _Latino sine Flexione_, which gives an invariable _-o_ ending at the adjectives and participles of the kind _-us, -a, -um_.
I think that an invariable _-a_ ending would be preferable, in case the number of feminine nouns in Latin is large enough. So I would need to know the percentage of feminine, masculine and neuter nouns (I guess some 40%, 30% and 30% respectively)


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## bibax

I counted it for you (not manually, of course, I wrote a simple program). The result is as follows:

Total number of words in dictionary: 58,198
Total number of nouns: 16,883

......masc..fem..neuter..common
1st : 366, 3359, 0, 26
2nd : 2250, 153, 2963, 0
3rd : 1970, 3697, 438, 29
4th : 777, 13, 4, 0
5th : 2, 46, 0, 0

N.B.
1) proper names (like Roma, Maharbal, Cilicia, etc.) were not included;
2) many synonyms were not included, e.g. balbuties (5th decl.), only balbutia (1st decl.);
3) there are also indeclinable nouns (cappari, chama, commi, ...) usually neuters;


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## Peano

Thank you!
It seems the feminine nouns are 45%, even more than I expected. The masculine ones are 33%, and the neuter ones 21%.
It is noteworthy that inside the 3rd declension the feminine ones nearly double the masculine.


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## CapnPrep

bibax said:


> Total number of words in dictionary: 58,198
> Total number of nouns: 16,883


Nice work, bibax, very interesting! What dictionary did you use?



Peano said:


> It seems the feminine nouns are 45%, even more than I expected. The masculine ones are 33%, and the neuter ones 21%.


OK, but you should be comparing the number of feminine nouns to the number of masculine and neuter nouns combined. If 45% of nouns are feminine, that means that the adjectival ending _-a_ is only correct 45% of the time… The rest of the time (i.e. *most* of the time), the ending is _-us_ or _-um_, which correspond to _-o_ in LsF.


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## bibax

> What dictionary did you use?


If you speak French, you probably know the dictionary: Dictionnaire latin-français (Jeanneau). It is the biggest dictionary (available on several sites) in the text format (precisely HTML format) which enables to make some analyses.


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## Peano

Right, the 45% of feminine nouns is not high enough to substitute always an _-a_. 
The interlinguist J. B. Pinth suggested to use _-o_ or _-a_ depending on the case. It is a fine solution, yet more complicated. I quote him (in the Interlingua of 1912):

_Ego sæpe converte finale -o de adjectivos et pronomines ad -a, si illos es juncto cum vocabulo, que indica ente femineo, aut cum substantivo que habe finale -a, -ie, -ione, -tate, -tute, -tudine, et non indica ente masculino. Per istud latinistas fi plus contento super Interlingua._
(Discussiones de Interlingua N. 17, 1912)


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## Liootas

Interestingly, French is said to have 45% feminine words and 55% masculine just like Lithuanian. Bearing in mind that mostly neuter nouns become masculine in M-F languages, we could assume that for Indoeuropean languages F45/55M for noun genders are dominant. Is it just a coincidence? Does anyone have some more data about other indoeuropean languages with genders, for example, Spanish, Italian, German?


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## Stoggler

Liootas said:


> Does anyone have some more data about other indoeuropean languages with genders, for example, Spanish, Italian, German?


 
This thread from a few months ago started to explore that question


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## Nino83

Liootas said:


> Does anyone have some more data about other indoeuropean languages with genders, for example, Spanish, Italian, German?



In this  table there are some percentages of the Italian core vocabulary:
-o/-i (II and most of the IV Latin declension): 41,2%
-a/-e (I and most of the V Latin declension): 30,3%
-e/-i (III Latin declension): 20,6%
-a/-i (I latin declension masculine of Greek origin, like "poeta/poeti"): 1,2%
-o/-a (II Latin declension which retained the neuter plural -a): 0,2%
invariable: 5,4% 



> la classe 3 si divide all’incirca fra un 45% di nomi maschili (fiore / fiori, fiume / fiumi, nome / nomi), una uguale percentuale di nomi femminili (siepe / siepi, conversazione / conversazioni, ribellione / ribellioni), e un 10% di nomi ambigeneri sia al singolare sia al plurale (cantante / cantanti, contabile / contabili, inglese / inglesi, testimone / testimoni )



The third class is formed by 45% masculine, 45% feminine and 10% of both genders.


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## Hulalessar

Peano said:


> Thank you!
> It seems the feminine nouns are 45%, even more than I expected. The masculine ones are 33%, and the neuter ones 21%.
> It is noteworthy that inside the 3rd declension the feminine ones nearly double the masculine.



But if the question is whether -a or -o should be the ending for nouns and adjectives in _Latino sine Flexione _is the question not how many nouns are feminine but how any end in -a? The answer to that accordng to the above figues is 22%. The question does sort of assume that _Latino sine Flexione _should follow Latin and there is no reason why it should. - and indeed if it should what is the most common ending of nouns in Latin? It is certainly not -o.


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## apmoy70

Greek:

42% masculine
30% feminine
28% neuter
Non-human animate nouns comprise 82% of neuter names.
43% of inanimate nouns are either feminine (36%), or masculine (7%). The rest (57%) are neuter.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

This is all fascinating, purely as data. I am moved to wonder, however, what purpose - if any - may be served. Given that the vast majority of abstract nouns in Latin (and Greek) are feminine, it is no great surprise to learn that their derivatives in Romance and elsewhere are also feminine, but it would be interesting to know further why this tendency exists at all, and whether it extends beyond the Indo-Germanic tongues.

There must be learned dissertations on this, but I am here well out of my depth.

Σ


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