Does anybody know how nouns got their gender?
I'm not even sure what category this goes in but it is something I've always wondered and no one has answered. Does anyone know the origin of gender with respect to nouns? I do not want to get flagged and I don't intend to be vulgar so please forgive me. But I was reading a novel and they referred to a part of the male and it was a feminine noun. I asked my wife and she said that a word for a female body part is a masculine noun. So were does the notion of gender of nouns come from, who assigned gender to different nouns and when new nouns are created (e.g. "internet") who decides whether it will be masculine or feminine?
9 Answers
I know that in some languages there is an overarching principle. For example, in George Lakoff's book "Women, Fire And Other Dangerous Things," which deals with language and thought and suffers from many logical flaws, he describes the classification of nouns by gender in one of the Australian aboriginal languages in which women and dangerous things are classified together (I have to admit, that just cracks me up).
There is another language (Alamblak, spoken in New Guinea) in which the masculine includes males and things which are tall or long, slender, or narrow such as fish, crocodiles, long snakes, arrows, spears and tall, slender trees, while the feminine includes females and things which are short, squat or wide, such as turtles, frogs, houses, fighting shields, and trees that are typically more round and squat than others. My wife has never heard of this language before but hates it now.
I just think that nouns were born that way. When a mommy noun and a daddy noun really love each other... 
Wiki page on the subject: Grammatical Gender: Gender Assignment
You got me thinking about this. In America, boats and cars generally have a feminine association/name.
A farm is typically the last name which is the "male" owner.
But I have found that the Spanish language ocassionally breaks rules in the feminine or masculine endings of "o" or "a". These simply have to be learned.
Water should be neutral while sex of a living entity is obvious. However it doesn't work that way in public objects. And the neutral things like "el aire"
You have brought about a very good question for those learning Spanish.
I hope many others answer.
I teach ESL so I am very curious
recycler4dave@comcast.net
I'm sure it goes back even further because it exists in languages other than the Greco and Romance languages. In fact it must go back to PIE. But especially when new words are created, like "internet," who decides if it will be masc. or fem.?Is it The Real Academia Española (at least for Spanish)? This has become to me a fascinating question. Maybe a topic for a research project, though it's hard to believe it hasn't been exhaustively done by somebody
I don't have the exact answer to that question, but I know there are a few on this site who would be able to help you. However, I believe the answer is going to somehow relate back to it's Latin or Greek roots.
Well then I hate Alamblak too. I'm with your wife on that one.
As in any other language sexual organs are recognized by a variety of names. In Spanish for example the male sexual organ sometimes ends in "e", in which case it is referred as "el". Other times it ends in "a" and then it's referred as "la". The same goes for the female sexual organ. I think it has more to do with the way a word is spelled than what the word actually means.
Maybe looking into the gender of the vowels might throw some light into this subject: a i u are female vowels, e o are male
Las cinco vocales vestidas de luz se fueron de viaje por sendero azul.
La A aprendió a amar las auroras y en las brisas del aire jugó a la ronda.
La E retornó trayendo esperanzas estrellas y ensueños para nuestras almas.
La I, delgadita, no pudo ir muy lejos y sobre bugambilias proclamó su imperio.
La O rodando al cielo llegó y a la luna llena a rodar le enseñó.
La U, con el viento, remontó el azul y como un fuerte trueno retumbó: Kabum!
It is curious because many Indo-European languages share this feature, I believe even English used to... yet the things that are male in one language can be female in another, or a single noun can mean one thing when used in male context, but another thing in female context.
What I've thought is that they're actually not male/female nouns, they're just nouns that use different articles/etc, that also map to different genders where there is a gender, and so we call them male/female. Is a house a female noun, or does it just use the same article and adjectives as one would use for a female? Is this just splitting hairs?
But yes I've often wondered the same, and thought maybe it's just down to who used the word most to begin with when the word was coined? Was the wife at home? Was the gynecologist a man? Perhaps as I learn more Spanish I'll pick up more examples to either add weight or completely disprove such an idea 
