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>Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter. Early Proto-Indoeuropean is theorized to have 2 genders - a
by kgeist 5y ago
>Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter.
Early Proto-Indoeuropean is theorized to have 2 genders - animate/inanimate, but by the late PIE period it evolved to the classic three.
- monopoledance 5y agoI want that! If we ever get our shit together, let’s use that for a common language. For us, for our home - earth. Edit: Oh, I translated this as alive/not alive. Guess, this was originally down to soul. Not advocating to go down that path again…
- fourtrees 5y agoHaving missed your comment, I was about to post about this. One interesting fact I can add is that Hittite, the oldest written IE language, has the animate/inanimate gender system rather than the 3-way system. You can also see remnants of the old system here and there in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Russian, ect. Of course, this is largely theoretical like you said, and I'm sure you could dig up some dissenting papers if you wanted to.
- kgeist 5y ago>You can also see remnants of the old system here and there in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Russian, ect. For example, there are some adjectives in Latin and Ancient Greek, which only have two declensions instead of three: one common declension for masculine/feminine, and one for neuter. For example: naturalis (masc), naturalis (fem), naturale (neut), as opposed to novus (masc), nova (fem), novum (neut).