who decides whether French nouns are masculine or feminine?

[seethesuninwintertime]

I know people say it's random except for people and animals but it's not is it? Someone somewhere - may Louis the something - must have decided for once and for all that breasts masculine and beards are feminine and made everyone else agree? And that people who switched it over were wrong.
Or does it follow what they were in Latin? In which case who in Rome decided?

i think we should be told.

L’académie Française

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

We had a Spanish person, A Russian person who spoke fluent German as well and a French person at a party one night and they were comparing masculine, feminine nouns and the vast majority were the same in all of the languages so Louis the whatsit was pretty busy back in the day.

This is what entirely put/s me off learning foreign languages. It just seems an insurmountable task to me to remember them all!

This is my favourite question ever asked.

it doesn't say that sportsnight.

Muttly's anecdote suggests it goes back to Latin or further. .......

Newer words are approved by L’académie Française

but wikipedia does seem to blame the Armedians or Hittites....

"Indo-European

Many Indo-European languages, but not English, provide archetypical examples of grammatical gender.

Research indicates that the earliest stages of Proto-Indo-European had two genders (animate and inanimate), as did Hittite, the earliest attested Indo-European language. The classification of nouns based on animacy and inanimacy and the lack of gender are today characteristic of Armenian. According to the theory, the animate gender, which (unlike the inanimate) had independent vocative and accusative forms, later split into masculine and feminine, thus originating the three-way classification into masculine, feminine and neuter.[47][48]

Many Indo-European languages retained the three genders, including most Slavic languages, Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient and Modern Greek, German, Romanian and Asturian (two Romance language exceptions). In them, there is a high but not absolute correlation between grammatical gender and declensional class. Many linguists believe that to be true of the middle and late stages of Proto-Indo-European.

However, many languages reduced the number of genders to two. Some lost the neuter, leaving masculine and feminine like most Romance languages (see Vulgar Latin § Loss of neuter gender. A few traces of the neuter remain, such as the distinct Spanish pronoun ello and Italian nouns with so-called "mobile gender"), as well as Hindustani and the Celtic languages. Others merged feminine and masculine into a common gender but retained the neuter, as in Swedish and Danish (and, to some extent, Dutch; see Gender in Danish and Swedish and Gender in Dutch grammar). Finally, some languages, such as English and Afrikaans, have nearly completely lost grammatical gender (retaining only some traces, such as the English pronouns he, she, they, and it—Afrikaans hy, sy, hulle, and dit); Armenian, Bengali, Persian, Sorani, Ossetic, Odia, Khowar, and Kalasha have lost it entirely.

On the other hand, some Slavic languages can be argued to have added new genders to the classical three (see below). "

@Greasyjane

This is what entirely put/s me off learning foreign languages. It just seems an insurmountable task to me to remember them all!

You dont have to remember them all. You learn it when you first learn a word and a lot of the time its obvious from the ending of the word

I was going to say L'Académie Française too. It has a large headquarters in central Paris, if I remember correctly.

That Wikipedia entries has the potential for a whole load of rabbit holes.

Proto Indo-European, which is the theoretical mother language of all the Indo-European languages (so German, French, English, Latin, Greek but also Hindi, Persian, etc) probably had genders which is why most of the daughter languages do too and why they will often be similar, but I’m not sure how genders developed in the first place, interesting question!

Very interesting see it gives native English speakers a serious disadvantage leading other languages.

When we were pointing to things around us asking the gender with the other language speakers they were saying things like obviously “table” is say feminine and we were just looking at them blankly wondering why is that obvious??? as the other language dealers nodded along.

I've always wondered this. It is just utterly bizarre how languages evolve. Who decided to divide words into feminine and masculine? Why would you do this?

Learning not leading

It might have a large headquarters in Paris but I firmly blame the Hittites.
Imagine if you were a Hittite and you made this rule and you thought "wouldn't it be fun if everyone had to learn the gender I've randomly assigned to words depending on how I felt on the day" and then WE ALL DID!
for thousands of years (not that I know when Hittites were)

I want to know how often French children get it wrong when they're learning. Are there some who just take ages to get it? Do they ever get it wrong on purpose for a laugh?

I find it a very interesting subject. My degree in MFL was over 30 years ago now and I often wondered about this sort of thing then, but without the internet being available to do any research and only very limited material available in our college library.

But it's not the Academie Française that decided it. They just give directions on what is or is not accurate. Somewhere in history in some original language, something happened that led to masculine and feminine nouns. It blows my mind.

It's harder learning new languages.

Moon is male in German and female in Portuguese and French
Sun is male in Portuguese and female in German

Also one of my favourite questions on MN ever!
I've often wondered this as a child - and I am native speaker of a gendered language.

My personal take is that Language and its speakers (including the Hittites ) decide by themselves.

L’académie Française does not decide, it just writes words and rules down so everybody can spell them the same way and everybody means roughly the same when they write/speak.

This is only slightly relevant and more than a bit OT, but can I just say that once I got a slap on the wrist from MNHQ about my use of grammatical gender. I was dumbstruck, had no idea that MNHQ cared so much about lingustics .

Anyway, great post OP!

Picture of suspects... these Hittite men may be responsible for our pointless noun-gender learning....

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Yazilikaya_B_12erGruppe.jpg

More on Hittites
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites

but they may not have been the first, it seems....

It's a bit like who decide there are 12 hours in a day (some bloke in Babylon?) which is equally random except we don't notice it because it is universal.

or is it? Did some people have, like 7 hours between sunrise and sunset? And they would have thoughts having 12 hours was just insane?

but not so much to remember as the gender thing.

We have the same in Irish. It’s so different to English, but similar to French etc.

It's so wierd isn't it

I've often wondered this (but not enough to do any actual research on it!)

I also wonder if french people get it wrong all the time, in the same way some native English speakers say of instead of have, use the wrong their/there etc