What does gender mean in grammar?

Answer 1

Gender means masculine, feminine or (sometimes) neuter.

In the English language we are accustomed to masculine and femimine applying to living things; another way of saying what sex they are. Neuter applies only to an animal that has been 'fixed' or neutered. A man or a bull is masculine, a cow is feminine and a table doesn't have any gender at all.

In some other other languages all nouns have gender. In French a lady is feminine, but so is a table, a chair or a door. A boy, a book or the sky are all masculine. Every noun is either masculine or femine; additionally each adjective has masculine and feminine versions and you need to use the gender of adjective that agrees with the gender of the noun that it is describing. A, an and the also have two genders which must correspond with the noun that they refer to.

Strangely, French is a fairly easy language to learn. Latin has three genders, plus a lot of other complications. Despite this, the Romans managed to speak it while at the same time conquering the known world.

Answer 2

In grammar, gender refers to a classification of nouns into masculine, feminine, or neuter categories. It is a way to categorize nouns based on their biological gender in some languages, while in others, it is based on arbitrary classification rules. Gender in grammar affects the forms of words, such as articles and adjectives, that accompany nouns.