When Nouns Grew Genitals
Why do some languages have grammatical gender?
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Show Notes
Languages all across the world have what’s called grammatical gender, which means simply that nouns get divided up into different categories or “classes.” Sometimes those categories are called masculine and feminine, like in Spanish, although for other languages the categories have nothing at all to do with natural gender or biological sex. In the first of a three-part Lexicon Valley series, Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield explore what it means for language to have gender and how it affects the way we think about the world.
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