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Gender in modern European languages is primarily not about sex; in addition, the word itself just means "kind", in the same sense as "generic". Historically, th
by jhanschoo 7y ago
Gender in modern European languages is primarily not about sex; in addition, the word itself just means "kind", in the same sense as "generic". Historically, there was only an "animate" vs. "inanimate" gender. The feminine gender developed from a couple suffixes (think -ic, -al, etc. though these are different suffixes) reanalyzed into a separate gender. Unfortunately nobody really knows why female names are feminine and male names masculine, unfortunately, since we don't have any evidence of PIE names.
- ajuc 7y ago> Unfortunately nobody really knows why female names are feminine and male names masculine It was always kinda suspicious to me that in Polish (and other Slavic languages I think) feminine nouns end in -a, and genitive of masculine nouns also ends in -a. Genitive denotes belonging among other things. So, if you have name "Mirosław" the female version is "Mirosława", and accusative for something that belongs to Mirosław is also "Mirosława" (for example "Mirosław's car" is "samochód Mirosława", and "Mirosław's wife" is "żona Mirosława"). It's kinda fucked-up, but it's not something people consciously think about, and at this point I think it's harmless.
- jhanschoo 7y agoYes, this similarity between a suffix that eventually came to characterize the feminine gender and the male genitive was present since Proto-Indo-European. Some hypothesize a connection. Similarly, the feminine and the neuter plural in languages that still have the neuter plural usually have the same form, since the neuter plural and the feminine both evolved from a collectivizing suffix (transform a noun for sth. to a group for sth.).