Gender

Question

0 I would like to know the place of gender in the English language. It is an important part in English? What is important about gender? What is unique about gender in English? 02br00The gender of animal words: Most of the animal words in the common gender are also used to refer to the male gender. What are the common gender words that are also used to refer to the female gender? 02br00I'd like to know the grammar words for "commom gender". thank you very much. 0-

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

0It sounds like you are writing an essay on gender. If you google for 'grammatical gender', you will find much more information than I have time to type here. 02br
02br
00If you have trouble locating 'common gender', an example is: 'man' as a species name refers to both 'man', the male of the species, and 'woman', the female of the species. 0-

Anonymous · Answer

I don't think gender exists in English in the way a French/Spanish/German etc speaker would expect.

Descriptors that suggest gender -he/she/his/hers - refer only to gender(***) in people, rather than gender as a grammatical concept.

Compare a French gender-laden sentence with its equivalent:

Il conduit sa voiture / Elle conduit sa voiture

- in English - He drives his car / She drives her car

In French, voiture (car) is feminine. The word "sa" (his/her) takes a feminine form, as voiture is feminine. If voiture was masculine, the sentence would read "Il conduit son voiture / Elle conduit son voiture".

Similar things are seen in Spanish/Italian/German etc

In English the gender of the car is not known or considered. The choice of "his" or "her" has nothing to do with the car, and is only concerned with the subject - the person driving.

A French speaker may mistakenly say "he drives her car", but this means something different. "He drives her car" means the "he" of the sentence is driving a car belonging to someone else - a female.

I would go as far as to say the English people do not understand the concept of gender! They cannot separate the grammatical concept from the question of private parts - male or female?

The only instances outside this are examples of personification, not evidence of gender in the English Language. For instance a ship is female - "*** bless this ship and all who sail in her".

This may fly in the face of more lofty views, but I offer it as an opinion

R. Carey

Gender

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