Gender in English

Common card · No. 478288

A system of grammatical gender, by means of which all noun classes required an explicitly masculine, feminine, or neuter inflection or agreement, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period. Thus, Modern English largely does not have grammatical gender in this sense. However, it does retain features relating to natural gender, with particular nouns and pronouns (such as woman, daughter, husband, uncle, he and she) to refer specifically to persons or animals of a particular sex, and neuter pronouns (such as it for animals and sexless objects and they, someone and you for situations with non-explicit or indeterminate gender). Also, in some cases, feminine pronouns are used by some speakers when referring to ships (and more uncommonly some airplanes and analogous machinery), churches, nation states and islands. Usage in English has evolved with regard to an emerging preference for gender-neutral language. There is now large-scale use of they as a third-person...

Read on Wikipedia · Image AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain