Gender is very important in English grammer. We can consider a noun or a pronoun as a gender. There have 4 type of gender- masculine gender, feminine gender, common gender and neuter gender. In this article we are going to describe all about gender. If you read this article may you will be clear about gender.
All about Gender
What is gender in English Grammer?
Gender indicates class of a person or things. Let’s see the picture below for better understanding
- You can see in the 1st row there have some picture of male – bull, cock, man, boy.
- In the 2nd row have some female picture – cow, hen, women, girl.
- The picture of 3rd row indicates both male and female- baby, teacher, players, audience
- The 4th row have the picture of some object- table, chalk, blackboard, glass.
So, form this picture we can understand that noun and pronoun can be divided into gender wise. We can divided gender in 4 category – masculine, feminine, common and neuter.
Gender
| Masculine | Feminine | Common | Neuter |
What is masculine gender? Example
Masculine gender refers all male creature
| Father | Actor | Horse | Drake. |
| Boy | Man | Brother | Lad |
| Dog | Autor | – | – |
What is feminine gender? Example
Feminine gender refers female category of creature-
| Mother | Vixen | Cow | Hen |
| Sister | Duck | Actress | Daughter |
What is common gender? Example
Common gender indicates both male and female-
| Doctor | Student | Artist | Friend |
| Baby | Child | – | – |
What is neuter gender? Example
Neuter gender is all the lifeless object, thinks –
| Chair | Clock | Light | Paper |
| Table | Bricks | Pen | Glass |
| Book | Pencil | – | – |
Rule of gender change
There have some rule to change masculine gender to feminine gender.
1. Omits the vowel from the last syllable of masculine gender and add ‘ess’-
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|
| Actor | Actress |
| Hunter | Huntress |
| Tiger | Tigress |
| Instructor | Instructress |
| Tempter | Temptress |
| Negro | Negress |
| Songster | Songstress |
| Waiter | Waitress |
| Porter | Portress |
| Governor | Governess |
| Founder | Foundress |
| Benefactor | Benefactress |
| Emperor | Empress |
| Director | Directress |
2. Change the masculine gender to feminine using totally different term.
3. add only ‘ess’ at the end of masculine word.
4. For the compund word, change the masculine word into feminine.
5. By adds ‘ana’, ‘Ina’, ‘ine’, and ‘s’ in the end of the masculine word.
Typically lifeless object are considered as a neuter gender but if the object carried some virtue of male or female then it can be considered as masculine amd feminine such as thunder, moon, cloud, sun etc. These are considered as masculine gender. Earth, autumn, country, village are considered as feminine gender.