Other Types of Gender Classifications
Some languages have gender-like noun classifications unrelated to gender identity. Particularly common are languages with animate and inanimate categories. The term "grammatical genders" is also used by extension in this case, although many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Note however that the word "gender" derives from Latin genus (also the root of genre) originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. For further information, see Animacy.
Some Slavic languages, including Russian, Czech, and Slovak, make grammatical distinctions between animate and inanimate nouns (in Czech only in the masculine gender; in Russian only in masculine singular, but in the plural in all genders). Another example is Polish, which can be said to distinguish five genders: personal masculine (referring to male humans), animate non-personal masculine, inanimate masculine, feminine, and neuter.
| masculine | translation | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| animate | inanimate | |||
| personal | impersonal | |||
| Nominative singular |
To jest dobry nauczyciel |
To jest dobry pies |
To jest dobry ser |
It's a good teacher / a good dog / good cheese |
| Accusative singular |
Widzę dobrego nauczyciela |
Widzę dobrego psa |
Widzę dobry ser |
I see a good teacher / a good dog / good cheese |
| Accusative plural |
Widzę dobrych nauczycieli |
Widzę dobre psy |
Widzę dobre sery |
I see good teachers / good dogs / good cheeses |
Furthermore, related Polish nouns can have the same singular nominative form, but decline differently based on animation. For example To jest nasz najlepszy klient → To są nasi najlepsi klienci ("He is our best customer" → "They are our best customers"), but To jest najlepszy klient FTP → To są najlepsze klienty FTP ("This is the best FTP client" → "Those are the best FTP clients").
In some languages such as the Ojibwe language the system of grammatical gender has no correspondence with a masculine/feminine distinction, but rather distinguishes between entities considered animate and inanimate. In Dravidian languages such as Tamil the distinction is often described as being between rational and non-rational nouns, but it is generally the case that masculine nouns fall into one class and feminine into the other, for which reason the Tamil noun class system can be described as a system of "natural gender".
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Gender
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