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Nouns seem to possess a well defined but covert system of grammatical gender. We may call a noun masculine, feminine or neuter depending on the pronouns which it selects in the singular. Mass or non-count nouns (such as frost, fog, water, love) are called neuter because they select the pronoun it. Count nouns divide into masculine and feminine.
When nouns deviate from the rules for gender, there is usually an etymological explanation: problema ("problem") is masculine in Spanish because it was derived from a Greek noun of the neuter gender, whereas foto ("photo") and radio ("broadcast signal") are feminine because they are clippings of fotografía and radiodifusión respectively, both ...
Often the gender distinction for these neutral nouns is established by inserting the word "male" or "female". [13] Sam is a male nurse. No, he is not my boyfriend; he is just a male friend. I have three female cousins and two male cousins. Rarely, nouns illustrating things with no gender are referred to with a gendered pronoun to convey ...
Dual-gender masculine/feminine nouns (e.g., actor, doctor) Dual-gender masculine/neuter nouns (e.g., bull, brother) Dual-gender feminine/neuter nouns (e.g., cow, sister, ship) Triple-gender nouns (e.g., baby, dog) These classes are not equally common. For instance, single-gender neuter nouns account for a large majority of common nouns while ...
The noun is normally used anyway when referring to specific sets of people (five Frenchmen, a few Spaniards), although the adjective may be used especially in case of a group of mixed or unspecified sex, if the demonym nouns are gender-specific: there were five French (or French people) in the bar (if neither Frenchmen or Frenchwomen would be ...
Danish (Danish has four gendered pronouns, but only two grammatical genders in the sense of noun classes. See Gender in Danish and Swedish.) Dutch (The masculine and the feminine have merged into a common gender in standard Dutch, but a distinction is still made by some when using pronouns, and in Southern-Dutch varieties. See Gender in Dutch ...