Gender - Inflections Of Nouns -Parts Of Speech-ESL/Learn English Grammar

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GENDER

[Sidenote: What gender means in English. It is founded on sex.]

21. In Latin, Greek, German, and many other languages, some general
rules are given that names of male beings are usually masculine, and
names of females are usually feminine. There are exceptions even to
this general statement, but not so in English. Male beings are, in
English grammar, always masculine; female, always feminine.

When, however, _inanimate_ things are spoken of, these languages are
totally unlike our own in determining the gender of words. For
instance: in Latin, _hortus_ (garden) is masculine, _mensa_ (table) is
feminine, _corpus_ (body) is neuter; in German, _das Messer_ (knife)
is neuter, _der Tisch_ (table) is masculine, _die Gabel_ (fork) is
feminine.

The great difference is, that in English the gender follows the
_meaning_ of the word, in other languages gender follows the _form_;
that is, in English, gender depends on _sex_: if a thing spoken of is
of the male sex, the _name_ of it is masculine; if of the female sex,
the _name_ of it is feminine. Hence:


[Sidenote: Definition.]

22. Gender is the mode of distinguishing sex by words, or
additions to words.




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