In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a type of noun class system. In this system, nouns are placed into groups called genders. These groups are not always based on the real-world traits of the things the nouns represent. English does not have this system. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns have a specific gender. Each language usually has two or three different genders. Words like determiners, adjectives, and pronouns change their forms depending on the noun they refer to.

Overview

Languages with grammatical gender often have two to four different genders, but some languages have as many as 20.

Common ways to divide genders include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or animate (living things) and inanimate (non-living things).

In some languages, the gender of a noun may match its meaning, such as "woman" being feminine. In other cases, the assignment of gender may not relate to the noun’s meaning at all.

In a few languages, the gender of a noun is always determined by its meaning, such as biological sex, whether it refers to a person, or if it is living. However, having words that refer to male and female roles, like "aunt" and "uncle," does not create a full gender system.

In other languages, the division into genders often relates to certain properties of the noun, such as whether it refers to a living thing, a human, or a specific sex. However, in most languages, the connection between a noun’s meaning and its gender is not always clear. For example, in French, the word for "manliness" ("la masculinité") is feminine. In such cases, a noun’s gender may also depend on its spelling or sound.

Usually, each noun belongs to only one gender, and few nouns can be in more than one gender.

Grammatical gender is a quality of nouns that affects the forms of other words, such as adjectives, pronouns, and articles. This process is called "agreement." Nouns act as the starting point for these changes, while other words change to match them.

Words that are affected by gender can include determiners, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and verbs. Gender may be shown on the noun itself or on other words in a sentence. When a noun is clearly marked for gender, both the noun and the other words may show similar changes.

Three main functions of grammatical gender include:
1. In languages with clear gender markers, it is easier to describe living beings with gender.
2. Grammatical gender can help avoid confusion by making it clearer which word a sentence refers to.
3. In literature, gender can help describe inanimate objects as if they are alive. Languages with gender distinctions often have fewer confusing sentences. For example, in English, the phrase "a flowerbed in the garden which I maintain" is unclear because it is not obvious whether "which I maintain" refers to the flowerbed or the garden. In German, the gender of the nouns helps clarify this. The word for "flowerbed" (neuter) and "garden" (masculine) means that a neuter pronoun refers to the flowerbed, and a masculine pronoun refers to the garden.

Grammatical gender can also help distinguish words that sound the same but have different meanings. For example, in French, "pot" (masculine) and "skin" (feminine) both sound like /po/, but their genders make them different.

Common systems of gender include:
– Masculine–feminine contrast
– Masculine–feminine–neuter contrast
– Animate–inanimate contrast
– Common–neuter contrast

Nouns that refer to male people or animals are usually masculine, and those that refer to female people or animals are usually feminine. Nouns that do not refer to a specific sex may belong to either gender, even if the choice seems random. Examples of languages with this system include many Romance languages, Baltic languages, Celtic languages, and some Indo-Aryan and Afroasiatic languages.

In systems with masculine–feminine–neuter contrast, nouns that do not refer to a specific sex can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Some nouns do not follow this pattern, such as the German word "Mädchen" (girl), which is neuter because it is a shortened form of another word. Examples of languages with this system include Proto-Indo-European, Sanskrit, some Germanic languages, and Greek.

In systems with animate–inanimate contrast, nouns that refer to living things (humans or animals) are usually in one gender, and those that refer to non-living things are in another. Examples include early forms of Proto-Indo-European and the Algonquian language Ojibwe.

In the Northern Kurdish language (Kurmanji), the same word can have different genders depending on context. For example, the word "dar" (wood or tree) is feminine if it refers to a living tree and masculine if it refers to dead wood.

In some languages, the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost for nouns, though pronouns still follow natural gender. For example, in Danish and Swedish, nouns that refer to people are usually of a common gender, while other nouns may be masculine or feminine.

In some dialects, such as the old Norwegian dialect of Bergen, only common gender and neuter are used. These dialects use similar rules for common gender as the masculine gender in other Norwegian dialects, which can make certain phrases sound unusual to speakers of other dialects.

Swedish common gender follows different rules than Norwegian dialects. Norwegian Nynorsk, Norwegian Bokmål, and many spoken dialects still use masculine, feminine, and neuter genders.

Manifestation

Grammatical gender can be shown through changes in word forms and can be influenced by other changes, especially those related to number (singular or plural). These changes can interact with gender rules.

The grammatical gender of a noun shows itself in two main ways: through changes in the noun itself and through changes in other words that go with it (called agreement).

Grammatical gender is visible when words like determiners, pronouns, or adjectives change their form to match the gender of the noun they refer to. How this happens, which words are affected, and the rules for marking gender vary across languages. Gender changes can also work with other rules, like number or case. In some languages, the way a noun changes its form (declension) depends on its gender.

A noun's gender can influence how it changes for number and case. For example, in languages like Latin, German, or Russian, different patterns of changes (declensions) are used for different genders. In German, the word See (meaning "lake" when masculine) has a genitive form Sees, but when it means "sea" (feminine), the genitive form is See because feminine nouns do not add an -s in the genitive.

Sometimes, gender is shown in other ways. In Welsh, nouns no longer mark gender, but gender can affect changes in the first letter of a word (initial mutation). For example, the word merch ("girl") becomes ferch after the definite article, but this only happens with feminine singular nouns. Adjectives also change based on gender in similar ways.

In many languages, a noun's gender is connected to its basic form (lemma), and sometimes a noun can be changed to create masculine and feminine versions with similar meanings.

Agreement, or concord, is a process where certain words change their form to match grammatical features of related words. Gender is one such feature. Nouns act as "triggers" for these changes because they have an inherent gender, while other words that change to match the noun's gender are the "targets."

Words that agree with a noun can include determiners, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, verbs, and others. Gender can be marked on the noun itself or on other parts of a sentence. If the noun is marked, both the trigger and target may show similar changes.

Natural gender refers to the biological sex of people or animals, while grammatical gender refers to certain sound patterns in a noun. For example, in Spanish, the definite article changes based on whether a noun has natural or grammatical gender. Spanish has two gender categories: "natural" (masculine or feminine) and "grammatical" (masculine, feminine, or neuter). Neuter gender is used for abstract ideas, like lo bueno ("that which is good").

In some languages, gender is only marked in the singular form, not the plural. This means that plural forms do not show gender differences. For example, in Bulgarian, adjectives have three forms in the singular (e.g., червен, червена, червено for "red") but only one in the plural (червени). Nouns that only exist in the plural (pluralia tantum) cannot be assigned a gender. Examples include клещи ("pincers") and очила ("spectacles").

Other languages, like Serbo-Croatian, mark both number and gender on nouns. For example, d(j)eca ("children") is feminine singularia tantum, and vrata ("door") is neuter pluralia tantum.

Pronouns often match the gender of the noun or phrase they refer to. However, sometimes the referent is not directly mentioned, and the pronoun's gender is inferred from context. In most European languages, personal pronouns are gendered. For example, in English, he, she, and it are used based on the referent's natural gender, even though English does not have grammatical gender. In Arabic, verb endings change based on the gender of the object pronoun in the second person. For example:
– uḥibbuk a ("I love you," said to a male)
– uḥibbuk i ("I love you," said to a female)

Not all languages use gendered pronouns. In languages without grammatical gender, like Malay, Hungarian, or Turkish, there is often only one word for "he" and "she." These languages may distinguish between people and objects but not always. In Finnish, hän is used for both "he" and "she," while se is used for "it" in writing but often for "he" or "she" in spoken language.

In languages with gender-specific pronouns, issues can arise when the referent's gender is unknown. This is common in gender-neutral language, such as the use of "they" in English.

Sometimes, the gender of a pronoun is not shown in the pronoun itself but in other words through agreement. For example, in French, the word je ("I") does not change, but adjectives agree with the speaker's gender: je suis forte (spoken by a female) vs. je suis fort (spoken by a male).

In languages that allow missing subjects (null-subject languages), agreement can still occur even if the pronoun is not present. For example, in Portuguese:
– muito obrigad o ("very grateful," said by a male)
– muito obrigad a ("very grateful," said by a female)

The adjective agrees with the speaker's natural gender, even though the first-person pronoun is not explicitly stated.

A dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used when a specific referent is not clearly mentioned.

Categorization of nouns into genders

Natural languages often group nouns into categories called genders. These categories are usually based on three main rules:

• Form (morphological): Nouns may be grouped by how they look, such as the letters or sounds at the end of a word.
• Meaning (semantic): Nouns may be grouped based on similarities in what they represent, like whether they refer to living things or objects.
• Rules or traditions (lexical): Some languages use arbitrary rules, which may have historical reasons, to assign gender to nouns.

Most languages that use grammatical gender combine these rules, but one rule may be more common than the others.

In many languages, nouns are assigned to a gender without considering their meaning. For example, in Portuguese and Spanish, nouns ending in -o are usually masculine, and those ending in -a are usually feminine, even if they refer to things that are not male or female. Other nouns may be grouped by their history or by patterns in the language. Sometimes, these rules override meaning. For instance, the word membro (Spanish) or membro (Portuguese), meaning "member," is always masculine, even when it refers to a woman. Similarly, pessoa (Spanish) or pessoa (Portuguese), meaning "person," is always feminine, even when it refers to a man.

In other cases, meaning is more important. For example, the word comunista (Spanish) means "communist," and it is masculine when it refers to a man, even though it ends in -a. Many Spanish and Portuguese nouns follow the gender of Latin words from which they are derived. For example, problema (Spanish) is masculine because it comes from a Latin word that was neuter. Other words, like foto (Spanish) and radio (Spanish), are feminine because they are short forms of longer words that are feminine in Latin.

Most Spanish nouns ending in -ión are feminine. These words come from Latin words ending in -ō, which were feminine in Latin. In contrast, the Northern Kurdish language, or Kurmanci, has different rules. For example, the word endam (member) or heval (friend) can be masculine or feminine depending on who it refers to.

Suffixes, or endings, often help determine gender. In German, words ending in -chen or -lein, like Mädchen (girl) or Fräulein (young woman), are always neuter, even if they refer to people. The suffix -ling always makes masculine nouns, such as Lehrling (apprentice) or Sträfling (convict). The suffixes -heit and -keit in German, like -hood or -ness in English, always make feminine nouns.

In Irish, most nouns ending with a "broad" consonant are masculine, and those ending with a "slender" consonant are feminine. However, there are exceptions. For example, nouns ending in -óir or -ín are always masculine, and those ending in -óg or -lann are always feminine.

In Arabic, nouns that end with a tāʾ marbūṭah (a letter that sounds like t or h) are usually feminine. Exceptions include the word khalīfah (caliph) and some masculine names, like ʾUsāmah. Some masculine nouns have plural forms that end with tāʾ marbūṭah, which might look like feminine nouns. For example, the plural of ustādh (male professor) is asātidha, which could be confused with a singular feminine noun.

In French, nouns ending in -e are often feminine, but there are many exceptions. For example, cadre and arbre are masculine, while façon and chanson are feminine. Suffixes like -age (as in garage) usually make masculine nouns, but plage (beach) and image are feminine. Nouns ending in -tion, -sion, or -aison are usually feminine, with a few exceptions like cation and bastion.

Some languages create different forms of nouns to show gender. For example, in Spanish, niño means "boy," and niña means "girl." Similar patterns are used to create feminine versions of other nouns, like abogada (female lawyer) or diputada (female member of parliament).

Personal names often include clues about the gender of the person. In English, names like Roberta or Justine end with -a or -e, which are common in feminine names.

Even though some languages use rules to create names or words for men and women, this does not mean the language has a grammatical gender system. For example, English has feminine suffixes like -ess (as in waitress) and distinguishes male and female names without a full grammatical gender system.

Proper names, like given names, follow the same gender rules as common nouns. In many Indo-European languages, feminine nouns often end with -a or -e. In Classical Latin, feminine nouns ended with -a, as in silva (forest) or

Gender shifts

Nouns can have more than one gender. Sometimes, changes in gender are linked to changes in meaning, and sometimes, different forms of a word have the same meaning. Gender changes can also happen between singular and plural forms. For example, a singular noun might be one gender, while its plural form is a different gender.

In some languages, a word’s gender depends on the sex of the person or thing it refers to. For example, the Spanish word "comunista" can be masculine or feminine, depending on whether it refers to a man or a woman. In other cases, gender changes are linked to differences in meaning. For instance, the German word "See" means "lake" when it is masculine and "sea" when it is feminine. In Norwegian, the word "ting" has different meanings based on gender: "en ting" means "a thing," while "et ting" means "an assembly," such as a parliament or court.

It can be difficult to decide whether a word with multiple genders is one word with many meanings or several separate words that sound the same. For example, in Bulgarian, the words "prast" (masculine, meaning "finger") and "prast" (feminine, meaning "soil") are homonyms—they sound the same but have different meanings and genders.

In some languages, a word can be used in multiple genders without changing its meaning. For example, in Bulgarian, the word "pustosh" (meaning "wilderness") can be masculine or feminine, with no difference in meaning or usage.

In Norwegian, many nouns can be either masculine or feminine, depending on dialect, formality, or the speaker’s choice. In written Norwegian, some nouns have optional gender. Using the masculine form often sounds more formal because, before modern Norwegian writing systems were created, people used Danish, which did not have a feminine gender. This influenced the preference for masculine forms in formal writing.

For example, the Norwegian word for "sun" can be declined as masculine ("en sol, solen, soler, solene") or feminine ("ei sol, sola, soler, solene"). Similar patterns occur with other common words like "bok" (book), "dukke" (doll), and "bøtte" (bucket). Many of these words are inanimate objects, which might be expected to use the neuter gender, but they can also use masculine or feminine forms. Neuter nouns, however, typically cannot be used with masculine or feminine forms in Norwegian.

In some languages, a noun’s gender changes between its singular and plural forms. For example, in French, the words "amour" ("love"), "délice" ("delight"), and "orgue" ("organ") are masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural. These differences may have historical reasons or relate to different meanings. In Italian, the words "uovo" ("egg") and "braccio" ("arm") are masculine in the singular but have irregular feminine plural forms ("uova" and "braccia"). These patterns are linked to older Latin grammar rules.

In Scottish Gaelic, some masculine nouns change to feminine in their plural forms. This happens because the plural form often has a palatalized final consonant, which is a common feature of feminine nouns. For example, "balach beag" ("small boy") becomes "balaich bheaga" ("small boys"), with the adjective showing agreement for both feminine gender and plural number.

Gender across languages

Languages that are related might not give the same gender to a noun. This shows that gender can change between languages that are similar. On the other hand, languages that are not related but interact can influence how a borrowed noun gets its gender. Either the language that borrows the word or the language that gives the word can decide the gender of the borrowed word.

Nouns that have the same meaning in different languages might not share the same gender. This is especially true for things that do not have a natural gender, like objects that are not alive. For example, a table has no natural gender, yet different languages assign different genders to the word for "table." In French, "table" is feminine. In German, "Tisch" is masculine. In Norwegian, "bord" is neuter. Even within the same language, words for the same concept can have different genders. For example, in German, three words for "car" have different genders: "Wagen" is masculine, "Auto" is neuter, and "Karre" is feminine.

Words that are similar in closely related languages often share the same gender because they inherit the gender from the original word in the parent language. For example, in Romance languages, the word for "sun" is masculine, as it comes from the Latin masculine word "sol." The word for "moon" is feminine, as it comes from the Latin feminine word "luna." This is different from German, where "Sonne" (sun) is feminine and "Mond" (moon) is masculine. However, there are exceptions. For example, "latte" (milk) is masculine in Italian, French, and Portuguese, but feminine in Spanish and neuter in Romanian. The word for "boat" is neuter in German but common gender in Swedish.

Here are more examples of these patterns (many come from Slavic languages, where gender often relates to noun endings):

• In Russian, "луна" (moon) is feminine, but "месяц" (crescent moon or month) is masculine. In Polish, "księżyc" (moon) is masculine.
• Russian has two words for "potato": "картофель" (masculine) and "картошка" (feminine).
• In Polish, the borrowed word "tramwaj" (tram) is masculine, but the similar word in Czech, "tramvaj," is feminine.
• The Polish word "tysiąc" (thousand) is masculine, but the similar word in Russian, "тысяча," is feminine. In Icelandic, the similar word, "þúsund," is neuter.
• In Spanish, "origen" (origin) is masculine, but similar words in Portuguese, Asturian, and Galician are feminine.
• In French, "équipe" (team) is feminine, but in Spanish, "equipo" is masculine. In Portuguese, "equipa" and "equipe" are feminine.
• In Italian, "scimmia" (ape) is feminine, but in Spanish, "simio" is masculine.
• In French, "mer" (sea) is feminine, but in Spanish, "mar" is masculine (except in some poetic or professional contexts). In Catalan, "mar" can be masculine or feminine depending on the dialect. All these words mean "sea" and come from the Latin "mare," which was neuter.

Borrowed words are assigned gender in one of two ways:

• Based on rules from the language that borrows the word.
• Based on rules from the language that gives the word.

Ibrahim found several ways that a language assigns gender to a new borrowed word. These patterns are often predictable, even for children who notice patterns without being taught.

• If the noun refers to a living thing, natural gender (like male or female) often influences grammatical gender.
• A borrowed word often takes the gender of the native word it replaces. For example, in British Italian, the word "bagga" (bag) is feminine because the Italian word "borsa" (bag) is feminine.
• If the borrowed word has a suffix (ending) that the borrowing language uses to show gender, that suffix usually determines the gender.
• If the borrowed word rhymes with a native word, the native word's gender often influences the borrowed word.
• If no other rules apply, the default gender is the unmarked gender of the borrowing language.
• Rarely, the borrowed word keeps the gender it had in the donor language. This is more common in formal language, like scientific terms, where people might know the donor language.

Sometimes, the gender of a word changes over time. For example, the Russian word "виски" (whisky) was originally feminine, then masculine, and now it is neuter.

Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the way grammatical gender is kept across languages can change not only the words used in a language but also its structure. For example, in the "Israeli" language, the new word "מברשת" (brush) fits into a feminine pattern because the word for "brush" in other languages (like Arabic, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish) is feminine. Similarly, the new word for "library" in Israeli, "ספריה," matches the feminine gender of similar words in European and Arabic languages. This might have helped make the feminine ending "-iya" more common in Israeli.

Distribution of gender in the world's languages

Grammatical gender is a common feature in many languages around the world. A study of 174 languages found that more than one quarter of them use grammatical gender. Another study by WALS, which looked at 256 languages from different parts of the world, showed that about half of these languages use gender.

Gender systems are rarely found together with numerical classifier systems. Gender and noun class systems are usually found in languages that use complex word forms, while classifiers are more common in languages that use simple word forms. According to Johanna Nichols, the following characteristics are often linked to languages that have grammatical gender:

• being in an area where languages with noun classes are spoken;
• using head-marking in word forms;
• having moderate to high levels of morphological complexity;
• using non-accusative alignment.

Grammatical gender appears in many Indo-European languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, and German, but not in English, Bengali, Armenian, or Persian. It is also found in Afroasiatic languages, including Semitic and Berber languages, as well as in Dravidian, Northeast Caucasian, and some Australian Aboriginal languages like Dyirbal and Kalaw Lagaw Ya. Most Niger–Congo languages also have noun class systems that can be grouped into grammatical genders.

In contrast, grammatical gender is usually not found in Koreanic, Japonic, Tungusic, Turkic, Mongolic, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Uralic, and most Native American language families.

Modern English uses gender in pronouns, which are usually based on natural gender, but it does not have a system of gender agreement within noun phrases, which is a key part of grammatical gender in many Indo-European languages.

Many Indo-European languages, but not English, have grammatical gender.

Research suggests that the earliest form of Proto-Indo-European had two genders: animate and inanimate, as did Hittite, the earliest known Indo-European language. Today, Armenian is known for classifying nouns based on animacy and inanimacy, without using grammatical gender. According to this theory, the animate gender later split into masculine and feminine, creating the three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Many Indo-European languages kept the three genders, including most Slavic languages, Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient and Modern Greek, German, Icelandic, Romanian, and Asturian (two Romance language exceptions). In these languages, there is a strong but not perfect connection between grammatical gender and how nouns are grouped. Many linguists believe this was also true for later stages of Proto-Indo-European.

However, some languages reduced the number of genders to two. Some removed the neuter, leaving only masculine and feminine, as in Vulgar Latin and most Romance languages. A few traces of the Latin neuter remain, such as the Spanish pronoun ello and Italian nouns with "mobile gender." Hindustani and Celtic languages also removed the neuter. Others combined masculine and feminine into a common gender but kept the neuter, as in Swedish, Danish, and Dutch. Finally, languages like English and Afrikaans have almost completely lost grammatical gender, though some traces remain, such as the pronouns he, she, they, and it. Armenian, Bengali, Persian, Sorani Kurdish, Ossetic, Odia, Khowar, and Kalasha-mun have completely lost grammatical gender.

Some Slavic languages may have added new genders to the original three.

Although grammatical gender was a major part of Old English, Modern English has a much simpler system, mainly based on natural gender and shown only in pronouns.

There are a few signs of gender in Modern English:

• Some words change form based on the natural gender of the person or thing they refer to, such as waiter/waitress and widow/widower.
• The third-person singular pronouns (he, him, his; she, her, hers; they, them, their; it, its) are specific to gender. He and she are used for men and women, they for people of unknown or non-binary gender, and it for objects or animals. Some pronouns, like who and which, do not change based on gender.

However, these features are much less common than in languages with full grammatical gender. In English, nouns are not usually grouped into gender classes like in French, German, or Russian. Gender agreement only happens with pronouns, and the choice of pronoun depends on meaning or context, not on any fixed rules.

Only a few English nouns have different forms for males and females, many of which are borrowed from other languages. English does not have active rules for creating new gender markers, though some, like the suffix -ette, exist but are rarely used today.

The gender of an English pronoun usually matches the natural gender of the person or thing it