Spanish speaking friends: Is there any documentation on how it was decided whether various objects were "male" or "female"? Or do various nouns just have particular genders for no specific reason beyond someone arbitrarily decided it at some point in the past?
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Replying to @sgrif
Isn't it that way with pretty much every language? (every that has genders for words at all, that is, so not English :) )
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Replying to @RReverser
All the romantic languages, yes. Not questioning the idea of gendered nouns, just curious if we know how the genders were decided or if it was just arbitrary
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Replying to @sgrif
Not sure what is "romantic" tbh, but in my experience it's usually rather arbitrary and different per language.
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Replying to @RReverser @sgrif
Ok, had to look up that term. I can only say that Slavic languages, although don't fit into romantic family, have the same property.
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Oh interesting, I didn't know that Slavic languages worked that way as well. I'm not super familiar with that family of languages
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