Gendered English: When, Why, and How Gendered Grammar Faded from the English Language
Believe it or not, English used to be a gendered language! This really doesn't come as much of a surprise, since English (while taking influence from French and Norse) is a Germanic language. German is STILL a gendered language today (as is French)!
So, if German and French are still gendered languages, why and how did English lose it's gramatical gender?
The English language used to have a gender system similar to that of Modern German, including feminine, masculine, and neuter cases. There was no real rhyme or reason to the gender, it was simply integrated into the language.
masculine: engel (angel) and nama (name)
neuter: scip (ship) and Ä“age (eye)
feminine: sorg (sorrow) and tunge (tongue)
English began to lose it's gendered speech in the 11th century and it had almost disappated by the 13th century. During this time "the" and "that" ceased to be gendered terms and became the two concepts we know of today, the determiner and demonstrative. There are two main reasons English may have lost its gendered system.
1.) People just stopped following the rules.
Around this time, the word "woman" was a neutral noun (much like how the German word "Mädchen", meaning girl, is neutral). This technically means the correct pronoun to proceed "woman" would be "it". However, the pronoun "she" began to gain popularity and thus broke the rule of grammatical gender!
2.) The Norse influenced the English.
The constant contact with the Norse may have caused the English to abandon their gender system. Since the Norse people slowly added new words to the English language, it makes sense that English would slowly abandon their previous, more complicated, system.
We still see remnance of gendered English today in nouns! Actor. Actress.
Prince. Princess.
Waiter. Waitress.
and a little bit with adjectives like blond/blonde.
It has been debated time and time again whether or not we should revert to more neutral terms (i.e. "server" instead of "waiter/waitress"). But ultimately, after a few centuries, any glimmer of serious gendering within the English language has faded away.
Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Do you think it'd be better or worse if English had a gender system similar to French or German?
