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Pama–Nyungan languages including Dyirbal and other Australian languages have gender systems such as: Masculine, feminine (see Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things), vegetable and neuter. [13] [14] Many Australian languages have a system of gender superclassing in which membership in one gender can mean membership in another. [15]
Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. [3] [6] [7]Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or animate and inanimate.
Languages with grammatical gender, such as French, German, Greek, and Spanish, present unique challenges when it comes to creating gender-neutral language.Unlike genderless languages like English, constructing a gender-neutral sentence can be difficult or impossible in these languages due to the use of gendered nouns and pronouns.
Jennifer Dorman is the head of User Insights at Babel. "Grammatical gender is a classification system for nouns," said Dorman. Today Dorman says 44% of languages have grammatical gender systems ...
Other languages, including most Austronesian languages, lack gender distinctions in personal pronouns entirely, as well as any system of grammatical gender. [1] In languages with pronominal gender, problems of usage may arise in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown social gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns ...
The impact on mainstream language has been limited, [35] but these theories have led to lasting changes in practice. Features of gender-neutral language in English may include: Avoidance of gender-specific job titles, or caution in their use; [36] Avoidance of the use of man and mankind to refer to humans in general; [37]
This system of gender is quite minimal compared to languages with grammatical gender. [10] Historically, "he" referred to a generic person whose gender is unspecified in formal language, but the gender-neutral singular they has long [11] [12] [13] been common in informal language, and is becoming increasingly so in formal language. [14]
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