A genderless language is a

natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

or constructed

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

that has no distinctions of

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...

—that is, no categories requiring morphological

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting o ...

for gender between nouns and associated pronouns, adjectives, articles, or verbs.

Yasir Suleiman Yasir Suleiman CBE is the Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is a Palestinian Arab living in the diaspora. Suleiman holds degrees from Amman University, the University of St Andrews, and ...

(ed.) (1999) "Language and Society in the Middle East and North Africa", , Chapter 10: "Gender in a genderless language: The case of Turkish", by Friederike Braun The notion of a "genderless language" is distinct from that of

gender-neutral language Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids bias towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, formation of phrases in a c ...

, which is neutral with regard to

natural gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...

. A discourse in a genderless language need not be

gender-neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...

(although genderless languages exclude many possibilities for reinforcement of gender-related stereotypes); similarly, a gender-neutral discourse need not take place in a genderless language. Genderless languages do have various means to recognize natural gender, such as gender-specific words (''mother'', ''son'', etc., and distinct pronouns such as ''he'' and ''she'' in some cases), as well as gender-specific context, both biological and cultural. Genderless languages are listed at list of languages by type of grammatical genders. Genderless languages include all the

Kartvelian languages The Kartvelian languages (; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian languagesBoeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primari ...

(including

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

), some

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

(such as

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, and

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...

(such as

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

), all the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

(such as Hungarian,

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

and

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

), all the modern

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

(such as

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

, and Kazakh),

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

, most Austronesian languages (such as the

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austron ...

), and

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

Language contact

Morphological view

From the morphological point of view, grammatical gender may arise because of

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

. Surveys of

gender systems Gender systems are the social structures that establish the number of genders and their associated gender roles in every society. A ''gender role'' is "everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that o ...

in 256 languages around the world show that 112 (44%) have grammatical gender and 144 (56%) are genderless. Since these two types of languages in many cases are geographically close to each other, there is a significant chance that one influences the other. For example, the Basque language is considered a genderless language, but it has been influenced by the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

feminine-masculine two-gender system. There are 6909 recognized languages in the world, thus a sample of 256 languages constitutes roughly 3.7% of all spoken languages. Thus, although this particular survey indicates a high proportion of gender neutrality, it does not take into account the other 96.3% of languages.

Loaned from other languages

Gender has been associated with words, but not with ideas. Scholars are trying to study the development of gender in nouns that have been borrowed from other languages. One example is the gender assignment of the genderless

English nouns English nouns form the largest category of words in English, both in terms of the number of different words and in terms of how often they are used in typical texts. The three main categories of English nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, and p ...

that were borrowed into the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

spoken by immigrants to America. The phonological form of the loaned word sometimes determines its gender. For example, Italians who immigrated to America do not identify the word freezer, but instead heard ''freezə'' (with a

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

). This sound is similar to /a/, so the word becomes ''frisa''. Consequently, the new word ends in /a/ which is feminine. The same happens with the words water (''la vuora''), the sweater (''la suera''), and the quarter (''la quora''). This process happens also in American-German and American-French. The English termination ''-ing'' (in

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable ...

forms) sounds somewhat like French ''-ine'' and has a similar function to the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

''-ung'', both of which are feminine suffixes. In this case, the genderless nouns do not generate one gender or another. In the American-Italian dialect, the masculine is the default gender, as in Spanish,

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, French,

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe *Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway *Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including the ...

, and Old English.

Specific languages

While

, unlike

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

, is gender-free grammatically, it does have

, which is a

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

concept. The distinctions of natural gender still remain in pronouns and possessive adjectives: ''he'', ''him'', ''his''; ''she'', ''her'', ''hers'', although these do not entirely follow natural gender, e.g. the feminine gender is used for ships and the neuter gender is often used for animals. Some

, such as

and

, altogether lack both grammatical and natural gender.

References

{{reflist Languages by typology Gender-neutral language Grammatical gender