I’m curious as to what the initial purpose of gendering every noun would be, since (from what I understand) it doesn’t really change the meaning of the sentence, just the form of certain words. Also, since English evolved from many of the ~~Romance~~ European languages that do have gendered nouns, why do we not use them in English?
In: Other
Old English used to have gendered nouns and case markers, like other Germanic languages.
Here’s one theory about why the language lost those features:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypothesis)
tl;dr: A massive influx of furriners (either Vikings or Normans) set up house on the island and learned to speak Old English. Because they learned it as a second language as adults, they learned it imperfectly. They dropped the gender and case markers. This got so common that everybody started talking this way.
Latest Answers