Are there masculine or feminine words in English? In general, there’s no distinction between masculine and feminine in English nouns. But sometimes we show gender in different words when referring to people or animals. In this article we’ll explain gender in English language in more detail.
We’ve dedicated this special IELTS Grammar 101 article to International Women’s Day 2020. We celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) every year on March 8. On this day, we recognise the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year’s theme is #EachforEqual.
What is “gender” in language?
About a quarter of the world’s languages uses gender. In technical terms, gender in languages is just one way of breaking up nouns into classes or categories. A noun is a part of language that names a person, place, thing, idea, action or quality. For example, nouns can refer to an individual name of a person, like Mike or Amrita. Also, it can refer to a place or thing. Examples of nouns might include Sydney, Louis Vuitton, or Qantas. In some languages, nouns, such as Qantas, can be male or female. Masculine of feminine.
It’s important to distinguish between grammatical gender and natural gender. Natural gender is simply the biological sex of a person, animal or character. Grammatical gender is a way of classifying nouns. But this doesn’t always match up with the “natural gender” of the person or object being described.
In some languages, grammatical gender is more than just “male” or “female.” Some languages have a “neuter” class. Other languages others have different genders for animate versus inanimate objects. See how this works in other languages.
English makes life a little easier for us when it comes to gender and grammar.
Are there any masculine and feminine words in English?
In general, there’s no distinction between masculine and feminine in English language. But sometimes we show gender in different words when referring to people or animals.
List of masculine and feminine words in English:
Masculine | Feminine | Gender neutral |
|---|---|---|
man | woman | person |
father | mother | parent |
boy | girl | child |
uncle | aunt | |
husband | wife | spouse |
actor | actress | |
prince | princess | |
waiter | waitress | server |
rooster | hen | chicken |
stallion | mare | horse |
How does gender work in foreign languages?
In English we do not assign a gender to words. But how does gender work in foreign languages? For Italians, boys (il bambino) are masculine. Girls (la bambina), on the other hand, are feminine. Germans, for example, assign three different genders to the three basic eating utensils: fork (die Gabel) is feminine. A knife (das Messer) is neutral. And, finally, a spoon (der Löffel) is masculine. Strangely, German doesn’t assign a gender to a young lady (das Mädchen).
Of course, German is not the only language that considers lifeless objects “male” or “female.” It also is not the only language that assigns living beings a grammatical gender unrelated to their sex. In Irish, for example, a girl (cailín) is masculine, while a stallion (stail) is feminine. The list goes on. If you want to know more, check this short article.