Why "person" have female gender?

Question

Any non-gender noun (like person, children, employee) used with pronoun "she".Why?

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

Any non-gender noun (like person ( yes), children ( no), employee ( yes)) used with pronoun "she".

Our newest employee started work on Monday. She will be a great addition to our team.
Who is the oldest person in the world? Here is a hint. She lives in the Caucasus mountains.

Why?
Because the person / employee is female.

Khoff · Answer

Why not? In many circumstances a person, child or employee is as likely to be female as male. After many,many years of always referring to a person of unspecified gender as "he," some people have started using "she" instead, at least some of the time. Or you can say "he or she," or you could re-write the sentence to use plural so you can use "they."

The employee must use his/her/his or her/ vacation time before the end of the year.
Employees must use their vacation time before the end of the year.

Can you give us an example of where you have seen "she" used and wondered about it?

Edited to add: I was thinking of cases where the person, child or employee is not a specific person whose gender is know. Of course, if person's gender is known, as in AlpheccaStar's example, you would use "he" or "she" as appropriate.

Ivan Susanin · Answer

_Can you give us an example of where you have seen "she" used and wondered about it?_
Your example is perfectly describe what I mean.

I google a bit and found the answer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historical_solutions
So, use of "she" to a person of unknown gender is relatively new.

Why I wondered? Now I think, that I see only using of "she", because it's so different from Russian where in same cases always used "he".

But main reason is that I want to chat on forum like this

And yes, please show me my most horrible mistakes.
Thanks.

Khoff · Answer

Ivan SusaninBut main reason is that I want to chat on forum like this smile

Welcome! I hope you enjoy the forum.

Yes, it's relatively recent to use "she" instead of "he." That Wikipedia article you found should be very helpful.

Of course, Russian has gender for most nouns and English doesn't. Isn't "dog" a feminine noun in Russian? (I studied Rusian long ago.) So if you were talking about a dog and you didn't know if the dog was actually a male of female, wouldn't you say "she"? Languages with grammatical gender are really confusing for native English speakers. In Russian you can usually tell by the spelling if a word is masculine, feminine or neuter, but that's not true in all languages. In French, for instance, trying to remember if "table' or "book" is masculine or feminine drives me crazy.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

khoff In French, for instance, trying to remember if "table' or "book" is masculine or feminine drives me crazy.

I'm so glad that English disposed with grammatical gender. That is one aspect of vocabulary that students do not have to memorize.
In Dutch, a closely-related language, you have to memorize the het-words (neuter) and the de-words (non-neuter).

Khoff · Answer

So, do "non-neuter" words sub-divide into masculine and feminine?

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Nope. Different nouns just take different determiners, and there are no spelling hints.

CalifJim · Answer

khoff In French, for instance, trying to remember if "table' or "book" is masculine or feminine drives me crazy.

But that's a problem that's easily solved if you just remember that in Spanish and Italian the masculines end in o and the feminines in a. Translate the French word to the Spanish or Italian cognate and you've got it!

Fr. la table (It. la tavola)
Fr. le livre (Sp.el libro)

Hee!

CJ

Khoff · Answer

Oh. yeah.  Easy peasy!!

Why "person" have female gender?

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