Neuter nouns are gender-neutral and not masculine or feminine. They are an element of grammatical gender, separate from real gender. Different languages differentiate genders in different ways, based on semantics, morphology or lexicon. In German, the neuter noun is almost arbitrary, while in Spanish it appears as a concept preceded by ‘lo’ or a neuter form of words. Old English had masculine, feminine and neuter names, but after 1066, grammatical gender disappeared from English as an inflection.
A neuter noun is a noun that is neither masculine nor feminine, but is gender-neutral. Nouns are words that are used to name a particular person, object, quality or action. It is the detailed words that underlie the understanding of messages in speech and writing and constitute one of the key types of words found in a person’s lexicon. Being neuter, the neuter noun tells the reader or hearer that the thing being referred to does not belong to or refer to a male or female in the context being described.
The neuter noun is, therefore, an element of grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is separate from real gender. This means the gender of the word and not the thing or object being described. However, this can also, in some languages, be the same thing. For example, in Spanish, a “professor” is either male — el profesor — or female — la profesora — and is never neuter.
There are four main types of grammatical gender. These are masculine, feminine, neutral, and common. Male and female nouns are self-explanatory: the noun itself is male or female or the person-object is male or female. Common gender applies to words that represent things that could be masculine or feminine, such as “leader,” “deer,” and “president.” The common noun is not necessarily present in all languages as a concept.
Languages differentiate grammatical genders in different ways. These can be based on semantics, morphology or lexicon. Neutral semantic nouns can be derived in meaning because the word is neither masculine nor feminine or lacks the qualities associated in that language with masculine or feminine things. The morphology indicates a neuter noun for the ending of the word itself, and all words with the same ending or the same root have the same gender.
In German, the neuter noun appears almost casual or arbitrary. This is because the gender of the noun is based neither on morphology nor on semantics. There are some instances where the endings of words give a clue to gender; for example, words ending in ‘-chen’ and ‘lein’, which are both neuter, even if this means ‘madchen,’ or girl, and ‘fraulein’, unmarried woman, are neuter. The rest of the neutral nouns need to be remembered because there are little hints from the words themselves.
The neuter noun in Spanish is complex. Outwardly, all names are either masculine or feminine. This depends on the gender of the object as in German or the gender of the named person or animal. The neuter noun appears as a sort of concept and is preceded by the definitive article ‘lo’ or by the creation of a neuter form of words such as ‘this’, transforming ‘éste’ into ‘esto’. The neutral form is used when the object is unknown or when referring to a concept or feeling.
Old English was more like German. The gender of the noun could be told by the ending of the noun. The nouns were then divided into masculine, feminine and neuter names with no idea of common nouns. After 1066, grammatical gender disappeared from English as an inflection. Most objects are now genderless, except for specific names used for people and animals where gender is known as the difference between a “bull” and a “cow”.
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