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
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Hello, I'm Anand Jagatiya and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service.
Welcome also to my mum's house, where on a rainy Saturday morning, she's making us a nice cup of Indian tea.
Chai tea.
That's something that happens quite a lot when I go back home, but something that's much rarer is that me and my mum speak my family's native language, Gujarati.
My Gujarati is pretty ropey, and one of the things I find most difficult is making sure that the words I string together are the right gender.
Bukocha or buki Chai, chini, buki, buki, jaini.
Buki, that is tea powder or tea leaves ground up very fine.
Chai, which is tea, is what's known as a masculine noun, whereas bukki or powder, is what's known as a feminine noun.
So can you have buko as well?
Bukko is like crumbs or bigger.
But bukki also has a masculine form, buko, which is used for stuff that's ground more coarsely, like crumbs.
Finally, there are words that are neither masculine or feminine, but neuter, like the word for milk.
Dud, ayz, best class.
And what makes these rules even more tricky for my poor brain is that other words in the sentence, like adjectives or verbs, have to agree with the gender of the noun.
So if I want to ask whether you've drunk tea, I would say, whereas for coffee, it would be coffee.