Why Doesn't English Have Genders?

[@NameExplain]

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[@pedroribeiro3262]

Actually, speaking a gendered language natively doesn't help much in learning other gendered languages, except if they are from the same family. For example, although it was easy to learn the French gender, as a portuguese, I really struggle to learn the German gender, that is totally diferent from the romance languages

[@Hl2_Tpal]

selling your soul to make a video that isn't correct

[@Hl2_Tpal]

@@pedroribeiro3262 yup i agree i've been learning german for 8 years and i still can't get some genders right

[@mingfanzhang8927]

❤😊❤😊❤

[@mingfanzhang4600]

❤😊❤😊❤

[@Olafje]

Not having to learn the gender of English's words is fully compensated by having to learn their spelling

[@troglokev]

Which is compensated for by the fact that you then know the spelling rules for Latin, French, Dutch and Old Norse.

[@tonysheerness2427]

@@troglokev Unless you are an American who modernised English spelling.

[@Olafje]

@@troglokev Believe me, Dutch is written totally different than English

[@troglokev]

@@Olafje the bits of English that borrowed from languages other than Dutch, yes. The point is that English borrows words from most European languages.

[@JesseKuiper]

The words that English has borrowed from other languages are often pronounced very differently as in their original language though.

[@Swordman1111]

as a german: the fuck is "dis"?

[@StuTubed]

He probably meant "die" but mistyped.

[@kyrakia5507]

22nd Century German, after the merger of the Feminine and the Neuter

[@OneOfThePetes]

I noticed that too.

[@mr.knightthedetective7435]

LMAO language jokes are uniquely funny

[@kyrakia5507]

It’s 22nd Century German, after the merging of the Feminine and Neuter

[@bloqk16]

My French mother told me that after learning English, it puzzled her why the French language had to have gender-labels for inanimate objects, such as for tables and chairs. She appreciated the English language having gender-neutral aspects to it, along with how forgiving the language usage could be when a person's spoken grammar could be atrociously bad, yet, still be understood.

[@MarcioHuser]

Coming from a gendered language, Portuguese, I gotta say that trying to re-learn the gender of every object in another gendered language is quite hard, because many times the genders do no match across languages 😅

[@usagiroxie]

That's so true! But not a major hurdle to be understood thankfully.

[@vannillaAJofficial204]

another portuguese speaker here?1?1!1?1?1! lets go?1?1!1?1?1 what the 🤑🤑🤑

[@Writer_Productions_Map]

Yo os tugas aq!

[@makouras]

As a Greek, this has been one of the hardest obstacles in learning German

[@thorstenjaspert9394]

Because of the language clash English is the most simplified Germanic language. Other languages have genders and declaration with different suffixes. French adjectives are gendered as well not only nouns. Something that makes English difficult is the mess of words. The flood of synonyms is horrible. If you read a non simplified novel you find tons of unknown words on every page. German standard vocabulary is around 500k, English should be a million.

[@mihanich]

I remember watching Family Guy episode with Death where he's portrayed as a dude. Which created a problem for the Russian dub as death is feminine in Russian so it was weird when someone's referring to himself in feminine acts and sounds like a man. Death is traditionally portrayed as an old woman in Russian.

[@coolandhip_7596]

That funny. In the English speaking world death is personified as a character we either call "death" (straight forward) or "the grim reaper" (as in a somber taker of souls). If I was the dubbers for that I would have wanted to try to localize it by rewriting the lines and getting a voice actress

[@mihanich]

@@coolandhip_7596 yeah but in the episode the death dates a girl. The Russian dub would have trouble turning him into a lesbian. Besides, I don't remember the whole episode but apart from that he acts like a very typical guy throughout the episode.

[@thelollykitty]

@@mihanichRussian homophobia :(

[@rizzwan-42069]

​@@mihanichw russian homophobia.

[@mihanich]

@@rizzwan-42069 yes it's indeed widespread here

[@Illumisepoolist]

I find it odd that Sun was seen as feminine, and Moon was seen as masculine. I see it the other way around.

[@mihanich]

In Slavic languages Sun (sъlnce) is neutral, while there are two words for moon - Měsęcъ (masculine) and Luna (feminine). Ъ stands for ultrashort "u" in proto Slavic.

[@V0liathon]

Romance languages have them as sun being masculine, moon being feminine

[@willowkinnie4life]

To me they both give fem vibes lol

[@Adiee5Priv]

​@@mihanich Don't forget kъnęžićь

[@imaadhaq540]

Well I mean it's the words that are gendered not the objects themselves

[@sajrra]

GER: 'der/die/das' did not fit into the thumbnail? instead a "der/dis"? Dis is not even a German word. Nuff critic. Imma watch the video now xD

[@graemesutton2919]

Dis and Dat are colloquial/dialect English words though

[@nonnadiona2659]

⁠@@graemesutton2919in german, Dis is a different form of dies, which comes from dieser, which is a demonstrative pronoun. Dat is a colloquial version of Das, the neutral article. it’s also a different form of dass, which is a conjunction.

[@egbront1506]

@@nonnadiona2659 "Dit og dat" exist in Danish as a translation of "dies und jenes" but they aren't really standard words.

[@jeremydobbs5578]

You could have gotten away with the Old Norse gaffe because I was still flustered at your insistence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets

[@PresidentBeavis]

^This

[@Michael-j4l3d]

Maybe not militarily but ceremonial helmets presumably used in ceremonies

[@Furienna]

It's just a quick way to say "here's a viking".

[@oldfrittenfett1276]

@@Michael-j4l3d But not by the vikings.🤣

[@beigenegress2979]

I want one of those helmets!

[@heronimousbrapson863]

Many Native American languages categorize nouns into animate and inanimate instead.

[@greenrobot5]

can you please give a couple examples? I wanna learn

[@chitlitlah]

It's thought that proto-Indoeuropean may have done this at one point. There was an Indoeuropean language from the Bronze Age that did it that way. Then, maybe the animate class broke up into masculine and feminine.

[@mariecontre]

It is not 'instead' really. Like in slavic languages animate-inanimate categorization is there while having genders too

[@LemmingwayArk]

Same with the Chechen language. Source = a native Chechen speaker.

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

​@@LemmingwayArkgive me example.

[@pyglik2296]

0:50 The polish verbs itself don't have gender, but they are conjugated by it. So for example "I ate" is "(Ja) jadłem" if I am a male, or "(Ja) jadłam" if I am a female.

[@V0liathon]

Fun fact, in English the word genre comes from the French word for gender, which essentially shows that grammatical gender is about noun grouping and less about genatalia 😂

[@V0liathon]

Atleast in the modern context of European languages, though I'm curious why the proto-indo-europeans came up with grammatical gender

[@FreeManFreeThought]

​@@V0liathon honestly, probably because in a society of early farmers, it made more sense when you are surrounded by plants and animals, and which ones to hunt, breed, and their phase of life are much more important: extending such concepts arbitrarily to the inanimate makes sense. But in a modern society where most of our interactions are with things that are manufactured, it has become a bit silly. But old habits die hard as they say.

[@hrayz]

@@V0liathon When PIE was a "modern" language, it had (an) ancient language(s) it came from. Who knows when "gender/genre" came about.

[@hugobourgon198]

Fun fact, both "gender" and "genre" come from French "genre." They are doublets.✌️

[@V0liathon]

@hugobourgon198 yup

[@RicktheCrofter]

Supposedly, over time, languages tend to simplify. English is a good example. Not only are nouns not gendered, neither are adjectives. There are no plural or singular versions of adjectives either. One of the greatest simplifications in English, there are no case endings.

[@laurencefraser]

This is... not wrong, but also not correct. What will happen is that, over time, languages will become easier to speak/write, losing complexity... but there comes a point where that process starts negatively impacting the ability to clearly articulate what is meant and not have the other party misunderstand, which tends to trigger the addition of more complexity again, to provide distinctions between elements that have become sufficiently mushed together as to become a problem. And then, of course, there comes a point where all the additonal complexity becomes more trouble than it's worth, and it all starts simplifying again. Of course, there are other factors that push in both directions, and one part of a langauge can be going one way while another part is going the other at the same time. English is not actually as simple as it looks. Prepositions very easily become case markers, for example, and that's only held off by a few odd parts of the usage (such as adverbs being able to be shoved in between in some contexts), certainly most of them are already arbritrary enough... And then there's the part where English verbs don't have all that much conjucational complexity in terms of the verb itself... but the verb Phrase is a complicated stack of arbritrary words that only mean anything in a combined stack (including certain slots being 'null' marked, where there's no actual word, but the distinction isn't betweeen "thing(marked)" and "not-thing(unmarked)" but "thing(marked)" and "other-thing(unmarked)" so it's still actively contributing to the meaning of the stack), where to change the meaning of the phrase you have to do anything from toggle the word in one slot to completly throw out the entire phrase, insert a different one, and possibly even swap out the verb itself for a different one with a similar but not identical meaning.... when other languages would just swap out a suffix. Which is to say, the Words are simple, the Grammar sure isn't!

[@fwiffo]

"Oh, I know, I'll learn Japanese. It's got no grammatical gender, so that should make it easier." *instant regret*

[@necococo]

it really should be easy as soon as you are able to read the hiragana and katakana and at least a few basic kanji. Japanese has more consistent rules that make it easy to learn as soon as you have expanded vocabulary.

[@laurencefraser]

Reading/writing Japanese is fairly comparable to English: Both very high up the difficulty/complexity scale. Speaking Japanese? Ehh, it's mostly a matter of langauges being easier or more difficult to learn based on how similar they are or are not to languages you already know, and how many differernt languages you already know. Amusingly, if you are familiar with early 1800s English, theres a lot more things that map conceptually 1:1 with Japanese than is the case with modern English.... though English will still in many cases prefer to completely rephrase things where Japanese will just swap out an honourific, and adjust the latin-derived to germanic word ratio where Japanese would swap out verb conjugations. And, of course, both have plenty of dialects and the standard/casual speech distinction to trip you up.

[@Frahamen]

Two things about gender I like to point out for people who are learning languages: 1 people, including educational youtubers and teacher often say thing "it's la table in French so tables are feminine" that's just not how this works. Things aren't gendered, words are. Synonyms of the same things can have different genders. 2 if you learn a language don't overly stress about gender. You will make mistakes but it'll be alright if you say le table people will understand it. You'll just sound like someone who isn't great at French but they would have figured that out from your speed and pronunciation too. Just use the language and don't overly stress about which articles you use.

[@DarkHelixia]

Yes, but the French can be a little proud with their language. They may understand you, but you can bet your bottom franc they will take every opportunity to correct your French.

[@Frahamen]

@@DarkHelixia which unironically probably the best way to learn. By trying and getting corrected.

[@matthewparker9276]

​@@DarkHelixiaespecially if you have an English accent.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@Frahamen There's usually rules that govern most of it, although there can be a great deal of exceptions.

[@AshleyGravesreal]

As an Italian, our language is too much specified with genders certain times too male ones, I find this thing of the english awesome.

[@adamclark1972uk]

Is your language an Italian?

[@theofficeroliviersamson4498]

English should be happy and they should be sad

[@Invalid-user13k]

And when English does have genders, people think of sailors.

[@insising]

I'm sorry, what?

[@ΒασίληςΒλάχος-τ3κ]

​@@insising in traditional english sailor slang ships and occasionally other vehicles are referred to as female, rather than the usual neuter

[@adamclark1972uk]

And countries are sometimes called "she."

[@Hession0Drasha]

Only because ships have names and names are either masculine or feminine....

[@hellethomsen8786]

As a dane we have we have two gender common and neuter but understanding the concept doesnt help learning languaes as german and french because the genders doesnt franlate.. english is much more easy

[@FoggyD]

In Welsh, nouns are still gendered but there's no indefinite article and the three forms of the definite article have nothing to do with a noun's gender! At least with Dutch/French/German/Italian/Portuguese/Spanish if you learn each noun alongside its corresponding definite article then you won't go far wrong. Oh, and Patrick's attempt to say "une bière et des cacahuètes" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Babbel, sorry! 😅

[@epikbearcz7962]

same in slavic languages

[@jdb47games]

3:34 No, a male chicken is called a cock. 'Rooster' was invented by Americans in the early 20th century due to them getting embarrassed about using the proper word, which is still in normal usage in other English speaking countries.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Come on now, there's no need to be a rooster about it.

[@duckman554]

Nay, a male chicken is called a Rooster. this is because everybody else calls male chickens roosters, or think of a male chicken when rooster is used.

[@jdb47games]

@@duckman554 Only in USA/Canada. Other anglophone countries don't have a problem with the word cock.

[@OneOfThePetes]

Yet they are not embarrassed about using the word "fanny" the way they do. Neither do they mind calling people "Dick". Lol.

[@sarfcowst]

Actually no, both cock and rooster are normal usage in all English-speaking countries. Rooster is a dialectal term in England from around 500 years ago and has been recorded in use in the USA from as far back as the 1760s. The advantage of rooster is that ALL male birds can be called cocks (which is a French word) so a word only for a male chicken is more useful.

[@knightwilliam6864]

This simplification of genders is starting to happen to Norwegian. I’m in the middle of learning it and I find that a lot of people just say «en dør» and not «ei dør» anymore. The feminine gender is still used somewhat, but in a lot of cases it’s being phased out. Edit: Note, I’m not a native Norwegian speaker so I can’t say this for certain. All of the Norwegian speakers in my family have passed away and I don’t live in Norway so I’m relying solely on the internet for this

[@msuomtv]

I get the same impression, but anecdotaly it seems to happen only to eastern dialects. Granted that includes the capital, half the population and most foreigners so it's the most visible, especially to someone learning the language.

[@lignorof8475]

i still remember the shift in portuguese from sex to gender. Even to this day i prefer to say “person’s sex” instead of gender so the word gender is exclusive to words, grammar, etc

[@DogDogGodFog]

Polish doesn't even have different words for "sex" and "gender". It's the same word.

[@poetryflynn3712]

You shouldn't have to do that...

[@OgBunnius]

@@DogDogGodFog thats so wild, they have such hugely important roles in english

[@DrunkenMalkavian]

​@@DogDogGodFog It should probably also be mentioned that while the same word is used for the two, there's a different one for grammatical gender.

[@aqimjulayhi8798]

Malay language has no concept of grammatical gender at all, not even in our pronouns. So, gender to us is sex. Our native word for gender is 'jantina', which is literally two words moshed together 'JANtan' (male) and 'beTINA' (female).

[@saltyaphid3195]

Wake up new german article just dropped "dis"

[@schnelma605]

die + das = dis? 🙂

[@insising]

@@schnelma605 maybe des since /i/ and /a/ are at opposite ends of the height spectrum

[@Memezuii]

just saying: the three words for the are not "se, seo, þay" /se sio tɛɪ/ but "sē sēo þæt" /seː seːo θæt/

[@HuckleberryHim]

Why did you type all that out just to correct the last word, it was the only incorrect one and off by one letter. Just say "it's not thay, it's that" (I'm too lazy to type thorn).

[@Memezuii]

@@HuckleberryHim because it wasn't the only one? he said "sio" instead of "sēo" too, & that point i just decided to put all three there.

[@HuckleberryHim]

@@Memezuii I don't know about pronunciation, which he botched for basically every non-English word anyway, but it was spelled "seo"

[@greenrobot5]

Recently in Argentina the last president tried to make all genders neutral, so "La" and "El" had to be written as "Le", but the new president got rid of that idea

[@zanzeperanation827]

I mean, it doesn't sound so bad of an idea, but it would be weird to people accustomed to gendered nouns. XD (i.e. La agua -> Le agua, El sol -> Le sol)

[@greenrobot5]

@@zanzeperanation827 It was confusing, and you can't go against tradition, most people were furious actually

[@jensphiliphohmann1876]

You cannot _enact_ a change in language. It needs to just happen.

[@V0liathon]

@@jensphiliphohmann1876 tell that to the Chinese lol or l'Academie Française

[@jensphiliphohmann1876]

@@V0liathon O.k., if you have totalitarian power, you perhaps can.

[@David-yw2lv]

I always wondered that myself.Thanks for posting.Another about English is there is far less conjugation of verbs than in most other languages.

[@HayTatsuko]

One of my favorite bits of Spanish is that _la leche_ becomes _el queso._ That is to say, the milk - feminine - becomes the cheese - masculine.

[@yozhleszy]

Compare die Maid f (genitive Maid, plural Maiden) to das Mädchen n (genitive Mädchens, plural Mädchen)

[@HayTatsuko]

@@yozhleszy That's bizarre. I read up on it a bit, as I don't know German, and found that the -chen suffix apparently turns a noun neuter. Neat.

[@yozhleszy]

@@HayTatsuko Nop. The -chen suffix is an indicator of diminutive. Compare де́ва (дѣва [děwa], maiden, maid, virgin) f anim (genitive де́вы, nominative plural де́вы, genitive plural дев) to дитя́ (дѣтѧ [dětent], child, baby, kid) n anim (genitive дитя́ти, nominative plural де́ти, genitive plural дете́й, relational adjective де́тский).

[@icanogar]

@@HayTatsuko It´s a diminutive marker that turns words in neuter. Same for -lein, -le and other regional variations.

[@thesquidi144]

Bro failed so hard with the thumbnail on German it’s Der/Die

[@CourtneySchwartz]

*Der/die/das

[@ClockMaster-mq2hm]

Actually, there are three - Courtney is correct.

[@thesquidi144]

@@ClockMaster-mq2hm yes I know they are 3 I am German myself I just wanted to clarify that „dis“ is not an article

[@fwiffo]

@@thesquidi144 It's a pronoun. "New phone, who dis?"

[@lauramarschmallow2922]

ich fin dis iwie süß xD

[@iammotanz]

As a linguist, it's fascinating how you manage to always "botch" all the foreign words. Your accent is so prevalent and interesting

[@OneOfThePetes]

Translation: "You speak like a retard"

[@adamclark1972uk]

Is IT a linguist? "As a linguist, I find it interesting..."

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

There is nothing fascinating about it. Not even trying to look up the proper pronunciation and at elast try to mimick it if you make a video about it is just what monolingual english speakers do on a daily basis.

[@teehee4096]

Thank you for using the English flag instead of the Union Jack 🙏. I get frustrated that all the languages of the UK get forgotten.

[@The0Stroy]

Yeah, Polish has gendered verbs and adjectives - but the gender of the verb/adjective depends on the gender of the noun that this verb/adjective references.

[@shwanmirza9306]

Same in Arabic

[@keacoq]

The question for me is not 'why does english lack arbitrary gender?' but 'why do languages have grammatical gender at all?' I support your suggestion that lack of gender helped English grow in popularity. Lack of gender is just one reason why English can so easily borrow foreign words. No gender to decide. Along with flexible spelling rules, lack of accents, simple conjugation, adjectives before nouns, etc.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Simple conguation? English has more exceptions than regular words. And the lack of accents not realy a positive thing, since it would help a lot with the chaos of vowels. Also every language do/did borrow words from different languages, even gendered languages too, they just did a better job at integrating the words into the language than english would. And the adjective thing is just what you're used to, it won't mean any change of any kind of level of difficulty if it was different.

[@laurencefraser]

@@tovarishchfeixiao Exceptions are, for the most part, generated when there is a signficant shift in how things are done, and Most words change, but those used exceptionally often or exceptionally rarely do not. Having gender doesn't really affect that much one way or the other.

[@kacpergrzesik8445]

as a Pole, it’s not like we have any idea why genders are a thing. we just got used to them also, I need to say that articles are just as hard to learn for us as genders are for English speakers

[@kacpergrzesik8445]

or should I say “for THE English speakers”. that’s what I’m talking about 🙃

[@christinebrown3359]

We use female pronouns for the ships, and sometimes when referring to a country or kingdom as a single entity (see cgp grey)

[@stephenbenner4353]

It wasn’t until relatively recently in the late 20th century that gender in English was commonly used to refer to someone’s sex. Before that, it was a grammatical term most of the time and one didn’t have to specify “grammatical gender.”

[@ChrisHilgenberg]

Funny that the European languages categorize based on arbitrary characteristics, but languages like Mandarin and Japanese who use counters when referencing quantity of nouns are way more specifically characterized.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Mandarin does that because they have far fewer uniquely distinguishable syllables, so you really need those measure words to help reduce the risk of confusion. The language itself has roughly 1500 unique syllables if you include the tones. And some things like measure words are needed to help reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding what's being said.

[@VenThusiaist]

"please do not add 'dis' as a new german article THEY ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH" - someone who's trying to learn German

[@tonysheerness2427]

It is nice to be different, variety is the spice of life. Standards have there place, but individualism has a place also.

[@大维y]

I used to think that we Chinese speakers are lucky for no need to learn two genders of words, but after I reviewed my language , I happened to find that Chinese divided into a more complicated way which called”元素”（elements）。

[@koppadasao]

In biology you talk about sex, not gender. Gender belongs in linguistics.

[@insising]

Some of this feels rather inaccurate to me, and I will explain why. The suffixes observed on Old English nouns were varied and complex. The gender of a word determined not only which article (the-word) to use, but also the grammatical suffixes of the noun, and the adjective-like words that described them. The word for "dogs" in Old English is "hundas", while the word for "ships" is "scipu". These nouns take different plural forms (-as vs. -u) because they fall into different grammatical categories- different genders, if you will, though you can increase complexity with different declensions and such. Nearing the time of the Norman conquest of England, Old English writers display confusion as to which endings go on which nouns. More precisely, they seem to be confusing the genders. While speakers of Old Norse may have influenced people's ability to use inflectional forms correctly, I don't feel that this would have lead to the complete erosion of English's gender system. Instead, English's re-emergence as a written language after the Norman invasion illuminates an extended period of weakening in pronunciation. Precisely, as more foreign words were introduced into the English language, longer words were pronounced with fewer syllables, and endings of words were reduced to simpler sounds. For example, the Old English word 'nama' (name) could take the endings -a, -an, -ena, -um, Middle English 'name' was left with only -e and -es. This simplification was so far reaching that English nouns no longer fell into these same categories. The 'hundas' and 'scipu' of Old English would be reduced to roughly 'houndes' and 'schipes' in Middle English. When you have no unique patterns, it's easy to forget the grammar surrounding them. However, in writing, the complete lack of gender marking happened earliest in the north, in the mid 12th century. Northern Anglic varieties, like Scots, observed the most influence from Old Norse contact. This change was complete, throughout English, by the 15th century. As the earliest Middle English (mid to late 12th century) texts demonstrate a lack of gender marking, this gives the Danelaw ~100 years and some 100 more of primary linguistic interaction, and the Norman conquest ~100 years of influence up to the time in which these documents were written. These early texts exhibit small and nonexistent usage of loans from Old French, respectively. This observation alone suggests that Old Norse influence may have deconstructed the grammar of English singlehandedly. In response, I ask the following question: given the social relationship between the English and French rulership, is it more likely that Old Norse did this in isolation, or that the linguistic effects of the Norman conquest were not limited to the south, and affected northern varieties too, even though they did not choose to write it down? Although Modern Scots exhibits far less influence from Norman French than Standard English, it is important to remember that virtually every variety of English underwent some variation of the Great Vowel Shift. Even if Scots is not English, the Anglophone sphere was tightly knit. It makes far more sense to me to come to the conclusion that contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers caused the case system of Old English to become unstable, while the Norman conquest of England finished the job. I almost feel like this is validated further when considering the amount of loanwords from Old Norse, versus those from Old French. Sometimes we cannot even be sure whether a word was borrowed from ON, or whether OE had a cognate, and the pronunciation itself was borrowed. Finally, I would like to address a large oversight from early in the video. Linguistic interaction between Latin and Celtic language speakers would not contribute to English being a gendered language. In large quantities, loaning most often causes the simplification of gender systems, as observed in the influence of the Danelaw and Norman conquest. It is far simpler to give up on learning the grammar of a language than it is to add it, completely and accurately, to your own. The gender system of Old English was inherited from Proto West Germanic, and not at all from the surrounding languages, as Celtic speakers were often absorbed into the English-speaking population, or killed and pushed away. Also, since Shakespeare isn't obvious to even educated people, it's worth noting, in the video, that Shakespeare's English belongs to what we call 'Early Modern English'.

[@schildkroete]

All languages and dialects change over time, but in their own different ways. Indo-European languages tend to have systems of grammatical gender because its ancestral language (Proto-Indo-European) likely had a 3-gender grammatical system. Historically, English has used to have a system of grammatical gender, but it also had a robust case system similar to standard modern German. However, over time, English lost its original system of grammatical gender in nouns because nearly all of its inflectional morphology (which includes nouns, verbs, adjectives) and case system (now only existing in pronouns) have eroded to the point that there are no longer any differences between historically masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns in terms of how they inflect (they almost never do except in pluralization with -(e)s). Simultaneously, word order in English started to become increasingly rigid because the position of nouns within sentences determined their role in the overall meaning conveyed by those sentences rather than the suffixes that would have indicated the nouns' case and gender. So languages with very little noun inflection, i.e. analytic-type languages like modern English, tend to lack grammatical gender or any other kind of noun class system.

[@BeaglzRok1]

Knowing the neutral word gender was thay does help explain why we basically just use "the" all the time.

[@henryblunt8503]

Most of the world's languages don't use gender, not even gendered pronouns, which English does have, so a better question to ask is why do most European languages have gender. Also, Old Saxon may have been thr bigger component in most of the OE literature that remains to us, for the political reason that it came from Wessex. Modern English derives more from the Anglian dialects of the east pf England.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

I was going to say this, a lot of European linguists treat gender as the default when actually it's an exotic and rare feature.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@PlatinumAltaria Indo-europeanist linguists being biased idiots. Why am i not surprised at all?

[@laurencefraser]

English does not actualy have gendered pronouns (radical idiots pedling defective ideological purity tests aside). It has Sex Marked (also Animacy marked, and Age marked, incidentally) nouns, of which pronouns are but one subset. These are dependent entirely on the refereant (the real world entity being spoken of), and have no impact on any gramatical agreement whatsoever. English just straight up does not have a noun class system (gramatical gender is but one subtype of such) at all. English grammar is also entirley mute on the subject of gender identity.

[@sujimtangerines]

As Aiden said, "English is 4 languages in a trenchcoat" and I can't stop laughing at that.

[@laurencefraser]

It really isn't. It's one langauge in a trenchcoat. That trenchcoat just has a LOT of pockets on the inside...

[@chrisamies2141]

Isn't it more accurate to say that English does have masc/fem/neut but almost everything is neuter? Some languages really don't have gender. Words like 'man' and 'woman' definitely have grammatical gender because they influence pronouns, possessives etc.

[@icanogar]

Covert gender! I like the idea, thank you.

[@laurencefraser]

Gramatically, English has no gender. What it Does have are Sexed Nouns. That is, there'll be one noun for an individual who is known to be (or failing that, appears to be) biologically male, and a different one if the individual is known to be (or appears to be) biologically female (some have a word for if the indivudal has been neutered, too). For many living entities (including plants and humans), Age is also indicated. Sometimes it's a binary ('mature enough to count as adult in the context we're discussing, or not) sometimes there are finer distinctions (usually farm animals). Animacy is also a big deal. 'it' is acceptable for a newborn of unknown sex, but in any other case to refer to a human as an 'it' is to declare them as capable of deciding and acting for themselves, and as worthy of being treated as a person, as a random rock would be.... maybe a worker ant if one is being particularly generous. Needless to say, this is... impolite. (the flip side of this, anything of sufficient metaphysical weight, for want of a better all encompasing term, can be refered to with male or female pronouns, because there is no pronoun for the combination 'singular, animate, sexless', and English rates getting Animacy right higher than anything else. The distinction here? The Words don't affect Each Other. They are all equally affected by the Referant, the real world thing the word indicates, and that's it. Gramatical gender doesn't actually care about the referant, At All... not once it gets going, anyway. While it may start off sex based (or that might just be a convenient way to lable it), Gramatical gender quickly comes to be asigned not by the sex of any referant, but by the similarity of the word to other words, with sufficiently similar words (be that by sound or by interaction with other gramtical bits) ending up the same gender... and then one can use the Other gender with the word to indicate something related-but-different. You might notice I didn't mention Gender Identity there? That's because English Grammar does nothing with it. So far as gender identity goes English Grammar is entirely mute.

[@billpg]

English has a lot of flaws but not having gendered nouns ain't one.

[@ryandanngetich2524]

It does not have A LOT of flaws,

[@laurencefraser]

Ehh, gendered nouns aren't really a flaw. Well... let me make a slight correction: having a system of noun clasess is not a flaw. 'gender' is but one system of noun classes, specifically one with two or three classes that, one way or another, became Losely associated with the sexes despite that having no actual practical bearing on how they work. There are other systems of noun class without that association, which can have more than three possible classes. Spoken English has a fair number of flaws, though not really any more or less than any other language. Writen English is a different matter. Most of it's 'flaws' are actualy a combination of complexity and poor teaching, but even once you get past that, some of those that remain are still pretty dire.

[@Maboitedemusique]

The way you said "le jus" made it sound like the plural. Le is pronounced more "luh" not "lay".

[@strike6621]

8:44 every example you gave was a non-indo european language. It's not rare for languages to not have gender, it's just rare in indo european languages. (Finnish and Hungarian are Uralic, and Turkish is altaic, so they're NOT indo european)

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Exactly. this grammatical gender thing is very much an indo-european specific thing.

[@RCSVirginia]

I can remember der, die and das from German, but I don't recall dis.

[@yozhleszy]

It’s 22nd Century German, after the merging of the Feminine and Neuter

[@josemanuelco0291]

Vikings didn't have horns on their helmets.

[@gideonparry5684]

The confusing part isn't so much the concept of gendered language, it's more remembering which word is which

[@bobair2]

I will stick to English as thinking of things as having gender that are objects makes absolutely no sense to me.

[@alireza2847]

Persian also doesn't have genders, we don't even have gendered pronouns, which I find so much better and easier. I think we also used to have genders, but because we didn't and still don't have any articles, the endings of nouns and adjectives were the only things distinguishing gender in Persian, a bit like Latin. However, as Persian like most other languages evolved to simplify these endings or to drop them completely most of the time, gender started to fade as there was no way to distinguish grammatical gender. However, some traces still remain such as the plural, for which we sometimes make a distinction in formal written language, by using the suffix '-hā' for inanimate objects and '-ān' for people or animals. However there are some exceptions to this, such as words like tree and eye, which I think are a remnant of gender in Persian as they get '-ān' and not '-hā' despite being objects. This may be because the ending '-hā' is related to the Latin '-a' that's used to indicate neuter plural in the nominative and accusative case, which wasn't exclusively used for objects and not all inanimate objects were neuter, kind of like how tree and eye could've been another gender other than neuter and therefore didn't get the neuter ending despite being inanimate. (The ending '-ān' may have been for both masculine and feminine nouns, like the Latin '-es' in the second class.) Nonetheless, in most languages the neuter evolved to be associated almost exclusively with inanimate objects with certain exceptions, such as not giving the neuter plural endings to some inanimate objects in Persian and 'child' in English sometimes being referred to as 'it', which by the way is related to the Latin id. However, a cleaer example would probably be the words 'amu' and 'ama' which mean respectively 'uncle' and 'aunt'. Here the endings distinguish the gender, a bit like how it is in Latin or in some modern Roman languages.

[@Dolph1nVR]

Thumbnail is incorrect, German should have “der, die, das,” “dis” isn’t a German word.

[@sirensynapse5603]

Der/dis? I think you are talking german skat? Dis und dat, hehe.

[@Jaggerbush]

I'm an English speaker and a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter - ASL not only doesn't have genders as explained in this video - it also does not use he/she/her/him. Some will say "I looked online and found a sign for HE" - but that's not ASL. That is English influenced pigeon sign language (PSE). If I were talking about my professor for example, I might set-up a person marker and index to them - or just use "themself" for a sign and if I were voicing in this situation it would sound like "My professor is cool. "They" are always understanding if my assignment is late. I hope I get them again next semester." Certain things may give it away such as "My professor is pregnant..." And from then on when I see the sign "themself" or index to that person-marker I could voice "she/her" from then on out bc I have been made aware of the sex of that person.

[@DBoone123]

I don’t like how the narrator adds an “aa” sound behind vowels. For instance “too” becomes “too-ahh”

[@KNG-pc5qd]

its an ai right? if not then jesus christ its so annoying

[@MonochromeWench]

If English still had grammatical genders then it would probably just lead to the same problem of the gender of English words not matching other languages causing people learning a second language even more trouble than how things are now.

[@sournois90]

"an exception in the world" the world: europe

[@miewwcubing2570]

💀

[@kaszaspeter77]

How could Latin from Roman times have influenced English, when the Anglo-Saxon came after Rome withdrew? I understand medieval Latin could have influenced English, but the video specifically refers to Roman times.

[@arrunzo]

I'd like to add that the interesting thing about the loss of grammatical gender in English is actually that grammatical gender was not uniformly lost all over Britain at the same time. Places that had more Norse language contact (corresponding to what is now Northern England and Scotland) lost grammatical gender more quickly. As the video said, this is most easily explained by conflicting genders in Old English and Norse, so people got rid of grammatical gender over time. The southern part of the Midlands and south-eastern England (Kent) lost grammatical gender later in history. For example, Kent in south-eastern England didn't lose all traces of grammatical gender until the 14th century. In other words, the southern part of Britain, despite being the place where Normans landed, was actually more conservative.

[@allangibson8494]

And the problem with gender in languages is German and French have almost exactly reversed gender assignments - the English just threw their hands up when the two mixed…

[@laurencefraser]

Sort of like how English verbs lost (most of) their subject agreement when (old?) Norse and old English interacted... two very similar systems that were just different enough that it made things more difficult rather than easier (except for that one that was still the same in both langauges, which is still around to this day) resulted in those systems being thrown out entirely in favour of something that wasn't going to get confused with either of them.

[@Hl2_Tpal]

As a hungarian speaker It's because they're right.

[@TrulsBekk]

In Norwegian, it has become optional to use the feminine gender. You can conjugate all feminine nouns as masculine nouns, effectively forming a common gender, like in Dutch. The Bergen dialect does this.

[@Nobodyatall6022]

Laziness is likely also the reason Romance languages lost the neutral, which existed in Latin. It’s also the reason words generally got shorter and simpler (ex. Italian) and many letters were muted (ex. French and Spanish)

[@fuqupal]

Just like to add something: The Normans where basically vikings too. They were descendants of Norwegian and Danish Vikings that had settled there less than a 100 years ago or maybe it was 200 years ago, but not too long ago. The name Normans comes from Norsemen. And Normandy... well also from Norsemen.

[@JMM33RanMA]

This is, as usual for the site, a very interesting video. As an ESL teacher, I had to study linguistics and at least one foreign language. I found Korean much easier to learn than the headache that is German, precisely because of the gender issue. When asked by students why we only have vestigial gender, as in using she for ships and occasionally for a beloved automobile, my answer was similar to the one given here. I said that English evolved as a trade language, a pidgin, for use among the various people who had settled the Insula Britonum/Eilean nam Breatannach. This doesn't, however, explain the numerous, sometimes not mutually intelligible, dialects. Geordie is not well understood by most of the other inhabitants of Britain, much less elsewhere, for example. Then there are the odd dialects of America and Australia. A note for those interested in this matter. Pennsylvania Dutch is actually German [Deutsch], but it is neither Hochdeutsch [standard High German] nor a specific German dialect. Because Immigrants came from different parts of Germany in significant numbers, they did what happened in Britain, the languages/dialects merged into a pidgin that also adopted some elements of English. Germans are astonished when they visit the area around Lancaster, PA, though German can be encountered more widely.

[@arcuscotangens]

7:25 You argued that the difference between Old English and Norse genders may have caused English dropping gender altogether. But then you bring up the idea that Norman French might have brought it back. Why make that distinction? Why wouldn't the imposition of yet another language with its own genders make dropping genders even more appealing? I speak German and English fluently, as well as some French and a bit of Norwegian. In my experience, Norwegian genders are broadly in line with their German equivalents, while French is basically guesswork. Of course these are not the languages of the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same would have been true then. That is to say, I suspect the gender confusion between Old English and Old Norse was very minor, while the confusion between English and French (or Old Norse and French) was much more severe.

[@matthewparker9276]

Gender, aka noun class, applies only to nouns. What you're referring to when you talk about gendered verbs/adjectives is class agreement, which is an essential part of a language having a noun class system. Each verb has several forms for use when referring to nouns of different classes, much like the definite article does. English does still associate object with masculine or feminine traits (e.g. vehicles and vessels are often described as feminine), but without agreement (with a couple of very rare vestigial exceptions) english doesn't have a noun class system.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

I'm pretty sure that there are languages where the noun's gender also has an effect on the adjectives that refers to that noun.

[@matthewparker9276]

@@tovarishchfeixiao yeah, that's agreement. You have to use the adjective form that agree with the gender of the noun, but the gender isn't a characteristic of the adjective itself. I hope I'm making sense.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@matthewparker9276 But you said "genders only applies to nouns" which is just incorrect. Because by the agreement it does applies to the adjectives too, even if they don't have a specific assigned gender.

[@laurencefraser]

Even then, When English uses 'he' or 'she' for something that doesn't have an actual sex, it's more a side effect of treating it as Animate, and then not having a pronoun for something that is 'animate, does not have a biological sex nor any traits indicating that one or the other would be less non-applicable'. Whether that results in a male or female pronoun being used depends on a bunch of factors.

[@ShinseiUK]

Just a side note, the neuter definitely article wasn’t “þay” (which caught me off guard as that kind of word didnt really exist at that time), it was þæt, which is how we get the word “that”

[@Finity_twenty_ten]

8:34 Who knew languages not on this continent (Chinese, Japanese, and Maori) languages that are very very very VERY not related to English, probably split off after Proto-Indo European ( Turkish and Hungarian and Finnish) And a random language isolate that isn't related to any other language (Basque) are not going to be related to European languages! Wow!

[@Finity_twenty_ten]

Russian also doesn't have any genders. It doesn't even have articles! You just say "cat eat food"

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@Finity_twenty_ten Russian has gender. Also many language families outside Europe have gender.

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

Parts of Norway have only two genders for nouns. Only maskuline ande neuter, while feminine words gain the properties of masculine words. The phenomena is described in different ways, depending on perspective - no feminine gender (because no words have feminine properties) - collective gender (masculine and feminine words share the same properties) - feminine as masculine (because feminine words have the masculine properties) While other areas have three genders, some words can be either, and you can choose, Depending on the word and settings; using the feminine form, can be perceived as more vulgar, while using the masculine form can be perceived as more up-tight. However, your dialect can shift this, depending on what's recognized as common within that dialect.

[@mabryperry1829]

Slight correction. Only nouns can have gender. Adjectives and other words, even verbs, can agree with a noun for gender, but they do not have gender

[@OneOfThePetes]

I have no idea why you think the sound "wa" is at the end of the words "do", and "to".

[@dl1083]

It took me a second to realize what you meant but lmao

[@OneOfThePetes]

@@dl1083 lmaowa

[@lunyteve]

It was grating my ears the whole video.

[@OneOfThePetes]

@@lunyteve same.

[@lisyekseremssko5578]

He doesn't " think " that. It's just usual British accent. Notice that every final U sound that he pronounces ends with W Due, two, too, do, new, It's consistent and natural for a lot of speakers.

[@kawper4425]

6:10 vikings wearing horns on their helmets is a myth lol

[@johnnyjoestar7769]

No way Sherlock

[@n1hondude]

Here's a question to consider: Why didn't the Muricans "FIX" words like TABLE with the great vowel shift? Centre -> center Programme -> program Organise -> organize etc but words like TABLE and APPLE kep that French "BL/PL" nonsense I believe Dutch has "proper spelling, -PEL and BEL Even Babbel is BabBEL and not babble

[@Stormageddon571]

0:25 The two were more noticeably separate until the 60s, when gender started being used for people.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

So, English is a woke language, being gender neutral.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Gotta remove English from video games, I don't make the rules!

[@somerandomgal3915]

Me a german: *sees dis in the title* I am pretty sure that not even kietzdeutsch has that. *checks comments* Ah well, at least I don't need to further correct things

[@brittakriep2938]

In german language there is a phenomeon, you didn' t noted. In some cases, a change of gender means something different. Two examples. Der See- the lake, but die See-- the sea, or der Schild- the shield, but das Schild - the sign.

[@WK-5775]

That's not a "change of gender" - you gave two examples of pairs of different words which happen to have the same spelling.

[@brittakriep2938]

@@WK-5775 : I am no linguist, and english is not my native language .

[@alexbr550]

English is smart for not having genders, makes things so much easier. As a native Spanish speaker it is a huge ordeal for people to learn the language. Having genders seemed like something invented that had nothing to do.

[@đœwæþ]

Nah English needs gender.

[@shwanmirza9306]

Kinda annoying since English has a word for female actor 'actress' but not for female doctor/engineer

[@alexbr550]

That seems to be a problem with someone that is into all that equality BS. Male or female doctor or engineer you are still an engineer. Do you need a world to prove a point? Sounds like you do only to satisfy this new equality agenda that has nothing to do with the language.

[@laurencefraser]

@@shwanmirza9306 Technically it could easily have had such a word... but instead you got a partially successful campaign to purge (the words for) such distinctions instead. (which, it should be noted, had the Opposite effect from intended, though that quickly became background noise as less obnoxious factors achieved the supposedly desired result in spite of this nonsense). Heck, English used to have a word for a female baker: a Baxter.

[@laurencefraser]

Nah, the lack of genders doesn't actually help much in terms of 'how much complexity is there', the complexity mostly just gets shuffled around. Also, gender is quite useful for error correction. English isn't the greatest on that front.

[@heikozysk233]

Fun fact for learners of German who have a hard time with German's three genders: Except for very few nouns which exist in different meanings in more than one gender, it makes absolutely no difference for any native speaker to understand you if you're perfect in getting all genders right or if you get all the genders wrong ;-) We will obviously notice the latter, but it does not have any impact on getting your message across. So don't feel intimidated to use a German noun if you can't remember the gender.

[@passatboi]

I wish they'd use the expression "noun class". Using terms like "masculine" and "feminine" just open a whole ugly can of worms. Like "Omg a bridge is a man in French but a woman in German" ugh.

[@ЮраН-ь2к]

a bridge agrees with articles and adjectives like a man in French but like a woman in German.

[@laurencefraser]

A gender system is a subtype of noun-class, and it was called 'gender' before the linguistic terminology was formalised... and ALSO before the word came to be associated with either sex or gender identity in English (gender identity derives from the sex related usage which in turn derives from the word being used to describe the gramatical feature in other languages).

[@jacklazzaro9820]

Answer: so we don’t worry about exception words, like «el lapíz» or «la mano» in Spanish

[@huntersmith8586]

I have been learning and speaking norwegian for nearly ten years. Just now noticed/realized/learned its gendered like that.

[@autonomouscollective2599]

It seems that the Anglo-Saxon neuter article word was the word that eventually won acceptance, becoming the word “the,” and the masculine and feminine forms died out.

[@robertvirnig638]

The question is what linguistic purpose assigning arbitrary gender to all nouns. One would think such usage would die off over the centuries if there wasn't a benefit.

[@hunchbackaudio]

Being Dutch I had 4 years of learning German in school. Half a year to learn the language and three and a half years to learn the der, die, das, dem, den….. Still clueless about it.

[@Real_God_Real]

Because we’re just too progressive 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

[@eaoa1234]

Babble is (NOT) The best language app

[@Hl2_Tpal]

Well no app is good to learn languages, its simply better to watch videos in the foreign languages that you want to learn

[@ian-hm6cx]

Surprised more languages haven't lost gender, languages typically lose unnecessary features and gender seems to be pretty trivial (admittedly as a native English speaker I may be biased, but I'm also a native Spanish speaker and making a mistake on word gender typically is not a disastrous mistake, although it does sound weird)

[@laurencefraser]

Gender serves two major funcitons: 1: error correction. This is surprisingly important. 2: you can have two fairly closely related concepts not have to either share the same word or be entirely different words, just use the other gender for one of them.

[@benuscore8780]

In Lithuanian which has grammatical gender, you can tell which gender a word has based on its ending, so it's almost immediately apparent whether you've gotten it right or not after you speak a sentence. For example, all words ending with "-as" are masculine, and masculine adjectives also end with "-as". Also a funny thing abut grammatical gender in Lithuanian is that inanimate objects are referred to with gendered pronouns, the same way as people.

[@yozhleszy]

потому что грамматический род не имеет ничего общего с одушевленностью или с полом. в индоевропейском языке было два рода, действующий (active, actor) и общий или бездействующий (inactive). последний всегда стоял в косвенных падежах как прямое дополнение. в позднем индоевропейском из общего рода выделяется "женский", это имена собирательные, имеющие окончание множественного числа "среднего" рода. не знаю, как в литовском, но в русском, где существительные не имеют гендерных флексий, это сохранилось солнцЕ, яйцО -- солнцА, яйцА, собакА, коровА гендерные флексии сохраняют исходные прилагательные. бѣлъ, синь бѣло, синє бѣла, синꙗ и большинство определенных прилагательных белый, синий белое, синее белая, синяя и если, "дѣтѧ" среднего рода, то одушевленные die Maid f (genitive Maid, plural Maiden) и das Mädchen n (genitive Mädchens, plural Mädchen) следуют той же схеме. одушевленность реализуется не флексиями, а склонением. в литовском одушевленные и неодушевленные склоняются одинаково или разно?

[@TentoesMe]

In speaking German, I usually figure out the correct gender, though sometimes I assign gender to something neuter. German past-tense is completely boggling. But wait, I speak English, so I don't really have any room to complain about weird languages😉

[@supercommie]

As a native Russian speaker I'm greatly thankful that English does not have gendered nouns.

[@shanescott8241]

Bro, hundreds of years of the nobility leaving us normal folks alone resulted in rapid changes. There were no fancy people to tell us we were doing it wrong

[@MrEthanhines]

can you do a video on noun cases?

[@yozhleszy]

The Russian language has for people and animals "пол" = "half". "Gender" = "род" is related to the origin of subjects and objects: the Romanov dynasty (род Романовых), animal breeds, varieties of agricultural plants, a kind of ceramic tableware, etc., as well as three grammatical genders. "Shovel" ("лопата") has no gender ("пол"), but is feminine ("род"), a child ("дитя") has a gender ("пол"), but is neuter ("род").

[@nataliaserhiienko9333]

Not only is it funny that gendered languages have genders for unanimated objects, and unfortunately they vary across languages (for instance, in Ukrainian "книга" (book) is female, and in German, it's neutral (das Buch)), but also it's amusing that we have gendered names for animals. That's why in Ukrainian fairy tales Wolf and Bear are mostly males but Fox and Squirrel are females. While for some animals it is possible to use specific forms for the opposite sex (вовк - вовчиця, ведмідь - ведмедиця, лисиця - лис), for others such forms simply don't exist (білка _squirrel_ - female only, сорока _magpie_ - female only). We should probably have male forms like "білк" or "сорок" but we don't😁. We can only say "самець білки" (male squirrel) but this sounds very formal, like in a biology textbook.