It is theorized that genders and classifications originally differentiated inanimate and animate objects and as the languages evolved and split off, some kept the noun classes while others did not. The occurrence of grammatical gender dates back to pre recorded history and once established, it was passed down to new speakers and modified over time. While the origins of this concept are largely unknown, the gender of nouns are so deeply embedded into the structure and classification of nouns it is generally understood that grammatical gender evolved with the language itself. Most Indo-European and Slavic languages employ the use of grammatical gender. In your vocabulary or on your notecards, including the article or gender will undoubtedly allow you to learn and memorize these together. The best way to approach grammatical gender is learning the nouns with their articles. While it can be learned through discovering patterns, pairing the word with the articles as you learn them, and simple repetition, it is interesting to note that children have an incredibly easy time mastering this idea. English speakers, whose language doesn’t use gender, often have a hard time learning, understanding, and applying this concept. Grammatical gender, expressed in two or more genders, can be a nightmare for language learners. While this may be a difficult concept for English speakers to grasp, grammatical gender helps to organize a sentence and avoid confusion when talking about multiple objects or their relation to a person. This phenomenon can be seen in many European languages: German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and the list goes on. The same concept is applied to masculine nouns while neuter nouns are referred to as “it”. However, in German you would say the equivalent of “she is strong”. In English, if you refer to a bridge one would say “it is strong”. Many languages employ the use of grammatical gender and it can change several things about the word, it’s function, and sentence structure.įor instance, in German the word for “bridge” is feminine. While in English, things are referred to as “it”, or gender neutral, that is not always the case in other languages. If you are new to language learning, the concept of grammatical gender may be new for you. Grammatical Gender and the Effect on Perception
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