July 26, 2024

Why is a ship a ‘she’?

30 minutes

In many languages across the world, all nouns are classed as either male or female, or sometimes neuter. The English language, however, only signals gender in its pronouns - he, she, it or they. For inanimate objects, gender just crops up in occasional examples like ships or countries, which, for some reason, are deemed female.

This lack of gender in English intrigued CrowdScience listener Stuart, since the other languages he knows all highlight whether something is male or female. Did English ever have gender, and if so, where did it go? Presenter Anand Jagatia dives into some Old English texts to uncover the idiosyncrasies of its masculine and feminine nouns, and learns why these gradually fell out of use.

But why do other languages assign gender to nouns – male, female, and sometimes many more categories too? And does this affect the way we think?

Contributors:

Andrew Dunning, Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford University

Rachel Burns, Departmental Lecturer in Old English, Oxford University

Suzanne Romaine, Professor of Linguistics, Hawaii

Ida Hadjivayanis, Senior Lecturer in Swahili, SOAS University

Angeliki Alvanoudi, Sociolinguist, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Amy Bahulekar, Writer, Mumbai

Presenter: Anand Jagatia

Producer: Eloise Stevens

Editor: Cathy Edwards

Production Coordinator: Ishmael Soriano