> Apparently (according wiktionary) the reconstructed vulgar latin word of origin, *linguaticum, was neutral. When the transition from 3 gender to 2 happened,

> Apparently (according wiktionary) the reconstructed vulgar latin word of origin, *linguaticum, was neutral. When the transition from 3 gender to 2 happened, neuter words had to be "assigned" to one gender or another. Sometimes this was just arbitrary, other times conditioned by phonology or semantics. The same phenomenon occurred when Sanskrit's 3 gender system gave way to the dual gender system of the new-Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi. In that case, most neuter words became masculine because they were often already phonologically similar to masculine words in the accusative case.