Yep. Most Latin languages have gendered nouns. Italian, Spanish, German etc. All have masculine/feminine objects.
Eg. In Italian a fork is feminine (la forchetta) but a spoon is masculine (il cucchiaio).
A table in your living room is a boy (il tavolo) but a table that you're eating lunch on is a girl (la tavola).
It's bizarre.
German isn't a Latin language, it's in the Germanic branch, along with English, Dutch and others. French, Italian and Spanish are Romance or Latin languages.
True! It's not just a Latin thing and Slavic languages have it too. I wonder where it came from originally. Probably one of those Proto Indo European things. Though it's in some Indigenous Australian languages too (though not all) so might be even older?
I think grammatical gender is just a feature of languages across many different families.
Yep. Most Latin languages have gendered nouns. Italian, Spanish, German etc. All have masculine/feminine objects.
Eg. In Italian a fork is feminine (la forchetta) but a spoon is masculine (il cucchiaio). A table in your living room is a boy (il tavolo) but a table that you're eating lunch on is a girl (la tavola).
It's bizarre.
German isn't a Latin language, it's in the Germanic branch, along with English, Dutch and others. French, Italian and Spanish are Romance or Latin languages.
True! It's not just a Latin thing and Slavic languages have it too. I wonder where it came from originally. Probably one of those Proto Indo European things. Though it's in some Indigenous Australian languages too (though not all) so might be even older?
I think grammatical gender is just a feature of languages across many different families.