that really depends on the language you're speaking. In german, greek or russian, you've got 3 genders, masculine, feminine and neutral. In some languages you can have even more, like in Dyirbal (Australian Aboriginal language) where you have four genders: masculine, feminine, neuter, and vegetable.
English has no gramatical gender, but instead has "gender pronouns" (he, she and it). In my opinion, that's why there is such a confusion between gender and "sex" in that language.
vegetable gender? lol
That's something English speakers have a hard time relating with because they associate sex and gender. But in most languages, gender and sex a different things. For example, in my native Portuguese, we can say sentences as:
- A baleia Γ© macho (the whale is male)
In this sentence, "A" is female, but "macho" means "male", thus i am using a female noun (baleia, meaning whale) and specifying it is actually a male animal. The gramatical gender of the word bears no relation to the sex of the animal.
For us, the use of 4th gender for vegetables is a plausible thing. Because gender is a language construct, not related to sex.
the more you know
