Argh, this does my head in too. Especially when you come across
things like all the words for female genitals in lots of languages
having the masculine gender. Work that one out.
yeah, or a fork being feminine, spoon being masculine, and knife being
neuter in german. lots of weird ones like that.
Also, what do the advocates of "gender-neutral" language do in
German? And what do they do in French?
what do you mean by advocates of gender-neutral languages? people who
think that nothing in english should be gendered?
i know in italian, in which a male profesorr is "il professore" and a
female one has traditionally been "la professoressa", there's a
movement to stop appending the "-essa" affix, in an effort to ungender
the language a bit.
however, there's a very important distinction to be made here -- that
of linguistic gender -- which has NOTHING TO DO with human sex (m/f)
-- and human gender, or sex. there are only two genders in lots of
latinate languages (french, spanish, italian, portuguese, i think
catalan, and likely rumanian -- so, i guess all of them), and they
were at one point termed "masculine" and "feminine" by some asshole
who wished to confuse all future students of language wondering why a
girl is neuter in German. really, these genders are just categories
that words fit into -- they could just as easily be called the
reverse, or called "red" and "green" or something.