That seems like the most likely reason for why it happened
Comment on Why do some languages use gendered nouns?
gigachad@feddit.de 4 months agoI’m just speculating, but I could imagine they personfied objects and maybe transfered gender to objects that way?
gorysubparbagel@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Skua@kbin.social 4 months ago
While I don't actually know a goddamn thing about the history of this, that doesn't seem to work too well once you look at more languages. While a male/female or male/female/neuter system is common in Indo-European languages, other language groups use versions that have more distinctions and haven't traditionally been associated with gender. Most languages in the Atlantic-Congo group that a lot of the southern half of Africa speaks have between ten and twenty different categories of noun in that sense. That's why they're more formally called "noun classes" rather than "grammatical genders"
vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
I think this is it. In Russian everything is gendered. A table is male and a plate is female. But the rule is simple. Any noun anding in a constant is a male, vowels are female except for nounds ending in “o” and “eh” (Э), those are “it”. But there doesn’t appear to be meaning behind which item is assigned which gender.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Interesting. I like that rule more than German’s “Whatever gender it FELT like to whoever decided”