Why in many languages do nouns have gender?

[Peter Edward]

It is obvious that man, woman, son, daughter have an inherent gender, but why is it that in French and German, for instance, everything is either male or female and in the case of German even neuter.
English seems with a few exceptions to have managed without this labelling. Why do other languages find it necessary and what is the reason for it?
I await your replies with inerest. Peter Edward

[jno]

it's hard to say, but I think it's just because people have a gender and they therefore suppose that inanimate things do. This goes a long way back to a rather more science-free time and has lingered on despite it being now bleeding obvious that a table is not really female. They don't think it's ;necessary'; it's just the way they are brought up to speak from birth and so rather hard to change. English hasn't just got rid of gender but of endings to words - nouns and verbs - generally; the -s ending is basically the only one still functioning. But most of this streamlining was done before the age of mass printing: it would be more difficulat now that spelling and grammar are set in stone

[Quizmonster]

It was not always so in English. In Old English (Anglo Saxon), nouns had gender, just as they still do in German, for instance. When using appropriate pronouns, these would be he, she and it, respectively.
When that system broke up, 'it' was used as the pronoun to refer to all nouns. However, some things considered somehow especially masculine were still referred to as 'he' for a long time afterwards - eg mountains, oak-trees etc - and others were still referred to as 'she' - eg boats, carriages etc.
The use of 'she' for a ship, for example, is at least as old as the 14th century in �modern' English and we still use it thus today.

[Peter Pedant]

Hi P E

I think you're confusing gender and sex - naughty boy

OE/Anglosaxon had three genders - and in facct I think the declinable definite article the - gives us in different cases these and those and these have changed their functions.

But of course you say, how didwe get from gender to his and hers ?

You recollect your confusion when you first saw 'sa mere' and had tobe drilled that his mother was not son mere

and yet in English the possessive adjective agrees with the possessor and not the thing possessed as in virutally every other Eurpoean language

and to that the language had to pass (somone suggested) that the language had to pass through a state where the nouns and adjectives were indeclinable

and in Anglosaxon this stage has not been identified


pp