# Remnants of grammatical gender in English



## terredepomme

Is there any trace left of the grammatical gender that once existed in Old English(as in other Germanic languages) except for those related to real genders(actor-actress)?
All I can think of is the "affectionate feminine" that one employs when referring to one's car or ship, but I don't think that's really a grammatical gender.


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## tFighterPilot

Countries are often being referred to as "she" also I think.


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## Scholiast

It is still common in historical writing to refer to nations, states and other specific political entities with the feminine ("Athens and _her_ Aegean Empire", for example). And some (British) English dialects - for instance in parts of Yorkshire - will still assign "he" or "her" to inanimate objects. I am sorry not to have a written source to refer to for this, and perhaps other Foreasters can help here, but I certainly can remember (from my long-past childhood days) thinking it strange to hear a cricket-bat referred to as "he".


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## Roy776

I think this is not about grammatical gender, but about the above-mentioned "affectionate feminine". I for example have heard earth, justice, country names but also the ocean being referred to as feminine objects. In the case of ocean, this contradicts with the original Old French/Middle French gender of the word (Occean, masculine). Although of course, the grammatical gender could have changed over the centuries.


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## CapnPrep

You might want to check out the threads listed in my post in an earlier thread.


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## Scholiast

Thanks, CapnPrep - I should have consulted the previous Threads. "Fools rush in... " &c. (I just don't always find them quick or easy to find).


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## Hulalessar

If by "grammatical gender" you mean placing all nouns into at least two classes which require changes in the forms of other words referring to them (such as articles, adjectives or verbs), then grammatical gender is completely absent from Modern English. Natural gender is reflected in pronouns and possessive adjectives, though in the case of humans _he_, _him _and _his_, and in the case of animals (and babies*!) _it_ and _its, _may be used where the natural gender is unknown. The "affectionate feminine" is no more than a custom; it is not wrong to refer to a ship as "it".

*Old joke:

Husband to pregnant wife: What are we going to call it?

Wife: Don't call it "it"!


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## terredepomme

> And some (British) English dialects - for instance in parts of Yorkshire - will still assign "he" or "her" to inanimate objects.


Interesting. Is their any trace of grammatical gender in dialects perhaps? Or closely related languages like Scottish?


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## Hulalessar

terredepomme said:


> Interesting. Is their any trace of grammatical gender in dialects perhaps? Or closely related languages like Scottish?



Not that I have noticed.

I am not sure that "trace" and "grammatical gender" can go together. Grammatical gender involves a requirement that every noun belongs to one of at least two classes.


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## miguel89

One could say that the Latin neuter left traces in Spanish in the form of some feminine nouns which have a masculine counterpart, the feminine carrying at least part of its former plural meaning. E. g. leño - leña, fruto - fruta, huevo - hueva, and so on. This is not to say that neuter still exists in Spanish —it does not— but there are still traces of it.

Does English have anything of the sort?


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## Scholiast

Greetings



> I am not sure that "trace" and "grammatical gender" can go together.  Grammatical gender involves a requirement that every noun belongs to one  of at least two classes.



What I have understood the Original Poster's question to mean was, "although modern standard English has abandoned the generic distinctions which existed in its parent languages [chiefly, Anglo-Saxon and Norman French], are there still occasional or regional usages of the gendered pronouns which retain masculine/feminine distinctions even though they refer to inanimate things, and thereby vestigially preserve older gender-patterns?"

These could be perfectly well described as "traces".


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## Hulalessar

Scholiast said:


> Greetings
> 
> 
> 
> What I have understood the Original Poster's question to mean was, "although modern standard English has abandoned the generic distinctions which existed in its parent languages [chiefly, Anglo-Saxon and Norman French], are there still occasional or regional usages of the gendered pronouns which retain masculine/feminine distinctions even though they refer to inanimate things, and thereby vestigially preserve older gender-patterns?"
> 
> These could be perfectly well described as "traces".



I see what you mean.

If we are to establish whether the regional use of "he" and/or "she" to refer to inanimate things reflects an older stage of the language we need more information. If it could be shown that objects referred as "he" were masculine in Old English and objects referred to as "she" were feminine in Old English then there would be a strong case for arguing that there are indeed traces. However, if there is no such correlation then the more likely explanation is that the speaker feels that the thing referred to is imbued with some special quality or human attribute and the use of "he" or "she" will reflect whether the speaker considers the qualities or attributes male or female.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> If we are to establish whether the regional use of "he" and/or "she" to refer to inanimate things reflects an older stage of the language we need more information. If it could be shown that objects referred as "he" were masculine in Old English and objects referred to as "she" were feminine in Old English then there would be a strong case for arguing that there are indeed traces. However, if there is no such correlation then the more likely explanation is that the speaker feels that the thing referred to is imbued with some special quality or human attribute and the use of "he" or "she" will reflect whether the speaker considers the qualities or attributes male or female.


I am sceptical as well. West Country dialect, e.g., is known for frequently using "he" instead of "it" but seldom "she". This suggests a independent development because we would assume to find a much more even distribution of "he" and "she", if this usage were a reflex of OE grammatical gender, even if we allowed for some gender variation.


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## Scholiast

Hello again



> If it could be shown that objects referred as "he" were masculine in Old  English and objects referred to as "she" were feminine in Old English  then there would be a strong case for arguing that there are indeed  traces



Hulalessar (#12) is of course quite right about this. It would be quite an enterprise to prove, especially since English is such a _pot-pourri_ of various origins, which were by no means consistent in their gendering of nouns (Latin _mare_ and German _*das* Meer_ are neuter, and I surmise that "mere", as in "Winder_mere_", was so too in A-S, but French has _*la* mer_).  I am insufficiently expert to comment further, but I do know of one study of West Country dialects by a lady called Susanne Wagner, in which at least masculine gendering of some inanimates, such as "loaf" (A-S _h_laf), is discussed. I think it was (typically expensively) published by de Gruyters some years ago.

[Sorry for cross-posting with berndf]


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## koniecswiata

There might be a trace of grammatical gender in English in the now old-fashioned use of his/him as the pronouns corresponding to the words "someone" or "anyone" or "everyone".  Example:  "Does everyone have his jacket?"
In that old interpretation, everyone-his did not mean that this only applied to men.  The masculine pronouns were used, and could mean biological/real life females, too.  Today, this interpretation has changed (is changing) and English-speakers tend to focus on real life gender and not grammatical gender--hence the use of other pronouns:  "Does everyone have their (his/her) jacket?"
The same situation held true for the word "child"--so I suppose there is some trace of grammatical gender in English, though it is on the way out.


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## terredepomme

> The same situation held true for the word "child"--so I suppose there is some trace of grammatical gender in English, though it is on the way out.


Child would be a neuter word, as Kind is neuter in German, so to fit your theory a child would have to be referred to as "it."


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## Hulalessar

There are two separate questions:

1. Does the language place all its nouns into at least two classes which require changes in the forms of other words referring to them (such as articles, adjectives or verbs)?

2. Does the language require natural gender to be taken into account?

With respect to (Standard) English we can answer the first question "no" and the second "yes".

When it comes to the regional use of "he" or "she"  to refer to inanimate objects (and which does not amount to something approaching an idiolect) it is probably (as Berndf suggests) no more than the variety having a different set of pronouns. In the South-West for example "we" can be an object pronoun and "ee" (= "he") can be used as an object pronoun to refer to things. "Ee" can also mean "you".

The answer to the second question is "yes" because _The boy has left *her books_ is incorrect. When third person singular pronouns are used you must take into account the natural gender or lack of gender of the person or thing referred to. I think that the use of "singular they" arose when singular pronouns stopped referring to noun classes and started to take natural gender or lack of it into account leading to the feeling that "he" should only refer to males. Of course "generic he" and "singular they" have existed side by side for centuries and it is only comparatively recently that "generic he" has fallen out of favour, at least in some circles.

Natural gender is also reflected in the lexicon with obvious examples such as brother/sister. It does though extend to some adjectives; "pretty" is complimentary when used of a girl, but ambiguous if used of a boy.

An interesting question is whether and to what extent languages with gender (= noun classes) allow natural gender to take precedence over grammatical rules. If you understand French, this thread is instructive: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=801512


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## Istriano

Boats and ships (and sometimes even yachts) can be feminine in (British) English.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once more

Thanks, Hulalessar (#17), for these thoughtful observations:



> 1. Does the language place all its nouns into at  least two classes which require changes in the forms of other words  referring to them (such as articles, adjectives or verbs)?
> 
> 2. Does the language require natural gender to be taken into account?
> 
> With respect to (Standard) English we can answer the first question "no" and the second "yes".



Of course Hulalessar is right here. But the Original Poster's question was about the possibility of legated remnants of gendering in 





> the grammatical gender that once existed in Old English


, rather than in "modern standard English", and it was to this question that I was trying in my earlier contributions to this thread to offer an answer.

As to the "generic he" 





> it is only comparatively recently that "generic he" has fallen out of favour, at least in some circles


:

Quite so. This is an upshot of feminism. I say this without value-judgment, for I can see nothing discourteous about saying, for example, "Madam Chairman" or (in Parliament) "Madam Speaker", and of course English "man" confuses ᾽ἄνθρωπος/_homo_/_Mensch_ with ῎ἀνηρ/_vir_/_Mann_, but some female writers have ignorantly taken issue with this, and insist on "inclusive" language in, for example, translating the Bible, insisting on "Brothers *and Sisters*" for the original Pauline Greek, ἄδελφοι, "Brethren", which is inclusive of the feminine too.

I do note, with interest, however, Hulalessar's good point about "pretty", and applied to a boy it is vaguely pejorative, with suggestions of homosexual inclinations. One might subjoin to that, that the adjective "handsome" when applied to a lady, is complimentary - she may not be conventionally "beautiful" or "pretty", but she is, thus described, an object of regard and eye-catching admiration.


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## Hulalessar

It is I suppose possible that there is a faint echo down the centuries whispering that it is all right to refer to things as either "he" or "she". However, since the indications are that gender was abandoned by 1400 and certainly with the advent of Early Modern English it would be a very persistent echo.

There is an article on "pronoun exchange" in English dialects here: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/ling/download/Wagner2002PronounExchange.pdf


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## Hulalessar

I have a question for German speakers. I know little German - most of what I know comes from being a Wagner fan so that I can say: "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond, in mildem Lichte leuchtet der Lenz" which I am sure will come in handy should I find myself on the Rhine at the relevant time of year - but I do know that diminutives are neuter. My question is if someone asks: "Wo ist das Mädchen?" do you answer: "Sie ist..." or "Es ist..."?


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## Frank78

Hulalessar said:


> My question is if someone asks: "Wo ist das Mädchen?" do you answer: "Sie ist..." or "Es ist..."?



Grammatically correct is "Es ist..." but a lot of speakers would say "Sie ist..."


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## Hulalessar

Frank78 said:


> Grammatically correct is "Es ist..." but a lot of speaker would say "Sie ist..."



What I suspected!


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## koniecswiata

The "Sie ist vs Es ist" example for Mädchen in German is a case in point of real life gender conflicting in the minds of speakers with grammatical gender.  In English the fact that until not so long ago "child" = he is a clear case of grammatical gender in English.  This "he" was used for any child--obviously including girls.  That would be a case of grammatical gender.  Today, this is totally on the way out as real life gender seems to have entered the language to the detriment of grammatical gender.  It would seem that English uses "semantic gender" as opposed to "grammatical gender."


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## Frank78

koniecswiata said:


> The "Sie ist vs Es ist" example for Mädchen in German is a case in point of real life gender conflicting in the minds of speakers with grammatical gender.  In English the fact that until not so long ago "child" = he is a clear case of grammatical gender in English.  This "he" was used for any child--obviously including girls.  That would be a case of grammatical gender.  Today, this is totally on the way out as real life gender seems to have entered the language to the detriment of grammatical gender.  It would seem that English uses "semantic gender" as opposed to "grammatical gender."



Isn't there still a conflict between natural and grammatical gender in English? The same as in the Mädchen-example.

Q: How old is your baby/child?
A: It is five months old. vs. He/She is five months old.


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## Hulalessar

koniecswiata said:


> In English the fact that until not so long ago "child" = he is a clear case of grammatical gender in English.  This "he" was used for any child--obviously including girls.  That would be a case of grammatical gender.



I am not sure that is the case.

I would analyse it as assigning two functions to _he_.

The first is where the person referred to is male: _The boy has left his book._

The second is where the person referred to is unknown or indefinite: _The pupil has left his book.
_
The use of the generic _he_ is not obligatory as you can say_ his or her_ or _they_.

I would put use of the generic _he _on a par with the use of _you_ in the previous sentence; although _you _is considered to be a second person pronoun, it is used in the third person sense of _one._ When I said "you can say..." I was not addressing you (= koniecswiata) personally.

Generic _he_ is used less simply because feminism has raised awareness that language in many respects reflects or appears to reflect the fact that is a man's world.

The best we can say is that the generic third person singular pronoun is _he_ rather than_ she _because at an earlier stage of the language the grammatical rule "the masculine includes the feminine" applied.


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## Brioche

Frank78 said:


> Isn't there still a conflict between natural and grammatical gender in English? The same as in the Mädchen-example.
> 
> Q: How old is your baby/child?
> A: It is five months old. vs. He/She is five months old.



I really cannot imagine a mother or father referring to their own son or daughter as "it".


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## Scholiast

Greetings



> The "Sie ist vs Es ist" example for Mädchen in German is a case in point  of real life gender conflicting in the minds of speakers with  grammatical gender



This is, I regret to say, what Kant might have described as a "category mistake". There is no such thing as "real life gender". There is differentiation of biological "sex" (male/female) on the one hand, and there is grammatical "gender" on the other, which may include include, incorporate or subsume biological characteristics, but in no sense has necessarily to do so. "Gender" is a function of language, not biology.

I refer (gratefully to a contributor in another thread) to chapter 2 of G. Corbett's _Gender_.


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## Ben Jamin

Brioche said:


> I really cannot imagine a mother or father referring to their own son or daughter as "it".



Oh yes, before the child is born.


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## Brioche

Ben Jamin said:


> Oh yes, before the child is born.



Generally speaking, people don't know before the child's sex before the child is born. 
When my children were still in the womb, we called them "the baby", and did not use a pronoun at all.


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## Perictione

Informative posts. A tangent perhaps, but you might want to consider synesthesia as a cause of regarding ''things'' as having gender.


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