gender of inanimate objects

[helpmetoo]

why do the french (and some other languages) give genders to objects.
a chair is surely a chair etc.
so they give the prefix le or la depending.
glad the english dont bother.
then in french if the gender is so important ( hoe are we supposed to remember and why) do they not care when more than one or if the object begins with a vowel???

[Quizmonster]

Click here for a web-page all about gender in language. We still have gender to some extent in English...eg we often call ships 'she', we have distinctions between 'he/she' and so on, but just be thankful that nouns other than proper names are gender-free nowadays!

[lafrancaise]

The fact that french has a gender for objects is because they don't have a neutral 'it' like in english. Not only do you have to put the le or la before the noun, you have to change the adjective as to wether it's masculine or feminine. This means a noun starting with a vowel will have the l' and a plural les but you'll have to change the adjective if there's one in the sentence.
English is one of the rare languages which doesn't follow this rule for objects.

[tara20]

German has three genders, male (der), female (die) and neuter (es). To make it more confusing, diminutives
(-chen, -lein) are neuter. So a small girl (M�dchen) is, like a young woman (Fr�ulein) actually a neuter noun.

[tara20]

Sorry, it shoul , of course, be der, die and das. Pronouns are er, sie and es

[chakka35]

Quizmonster, 'he/she' in English is not a distinction of gender but of sex, two things which are often confused nowadays when people are increasingly talking about a person's gender when they mean that person's sex.
Sex is denoted by male/female and gender in foreign nouns by masculine/feminine and the gender has nothing to do with the sex of any animal the noun might represent. Thus it is always 'le chat' whether the cat is a queen or a tom.
Gender in nouns is such a useless aspect of a language, making it that much more difficult to learn, that I am surprised that it is so common. In fact, off-hand, only English comes to mind as being free from it, with no requirement for adjectives and articles to have to 'agree' with their nouns.

[Quizmonster]

Chakka, Chambers Dictionary defines 'gender' thus..."a distinction of words roughly corresponding to the sex to which they refer (grammar)."
In addition, Roget's Thesaurus places 'gender' and 'sex' side by side under the 'Class' heading. The words are, in general usage, effectively synonymous.
Given that this is a thread on AnswerBank and not a series of contributions to an academic linguistics symposium, I'm quite happy to be seen referring to the words 'he' and 'she' as gender-indicative. No-one will have misunderstood my meaning.
But what the hey!

[drchasuble]

It's not a prefix. It's an article.

[chakka35]

Quizmonster, nothing in that justifies your claim that he/she is a version of the foreign noun/gender principle. They are words used to indicate in English whether a person is male or female, and, as I said before, masculine and feminine in foreign languages have nothing
to do with sex. That ships are called 'she' arises from the sailor's sentimental view of a ship as a woman, presumably because of her grace and beauty. It denotes the ship as female not the noun 'ship' as feminine.
That Chambers defines 'gender' that way is not surprising: it is the job of a dictionary to tell us how words are used, not how we should use them. Look at some of the distasteful definitions that Chambers gives to the word 'Jew'. I'm sure you wouldn't want to use the word that way merely because it is in the dictionary.

[Quizmonster]

Chakka, you simply reiterate the point I myself was making...I even underlined it!..that I was using the word as it is used. (Obviously, I do not use offensive word-meanings, as I'm clever enough to realise when that applies. It doesn't here.)
End of story and there I shall leave it.

[THECORBYLOON]

You speak about adjectives not having to agree with their nouns in English but what about a blond executor or a blonde executrix, depending upon the gender of the person involved?