Introduction 

People often use the gender word to indicate male, female, or combination of characteristics of both. Gender in the language is a type of way to bifurcate nouns into categories or classes. Generally, it is used to indicate living and nonliving things and all the other things present in the universe. Gender is described by the classification of nouns and pronouns as masculine, feminine, and neuter. The gender of different words varies in some languages. 

Discussion

What is gender 

Gender defines whether someone is male or female. It defines the characteristics of men, women, boys, and girls that are being made socially. This involves rules or norms, roles, and behaviors related to being a man, woman, girl, or boy. The gender of words varies from one language to another.  

Types of gender 

Types of gender can be broadly categorized into four in English. They are masculine, feminine, neuter, and common gender. Masculine gender describes the male member of a particular species (boy, man, actor, and many more). On the other hand, the feminine gender indicates the female member of a certain species. Examples of feminine gender are girls, women, actresses, and many more. Common gender points out the members of a certain species that do not have a particular gender such as friend, parent, student, teacher, and others. Lastly, the neuter gender refers to those things that do not have genders such as a table, water, sun, and others. 

While in a few languages, the neuter gender takes on a certain gender. For example, in Spanish, the table is recognized as feminine and on the other hand, the pencil is recognized as masculine gender. In English, this comes under the neuter gender. Along with all of the above gender, it can be classified into Agender, bigender, transgender, and others. Agender is that which does not specify a certain gender. Other terms that can be used to describe this gender are neutral gender, genderless. Bigender are those that have two genders. People who show bigender often showcase cultural feminine and masculine roles. Transgender are those people who are identified as a different gender than their assigned gender at the time of birth. 

Gender in English 

Gender in English is divided into four parts namely masculine, feminine, common, and neuter gender.

Masculine gender: A noun that particularly specifies the subtype of the male is called masculine gender. Examples: Man, boy, father, king, and others. The masculine gender can be used in a sentence this way: Father of ram is known as a hard-working person. 

Feminine gender:  A noun that indicates the female subtype is called as feminine gender. Example: Woman, girl, queen, actress, and others. Masculine gender can be used in a sentence this way: The girl is known for her brilliance.

Common gender: In English, there are a lot of things that do not specify a certain gender. It stands for both female and male. Example: Parents, Teachers, students. For example, His parents are so strict. Here in this sentence, the word parent is a common gender that does specify any particular gender.

Neuter gender: In English, Some are neither female nor male. They fall under the neuter gender category. In this category table, pencil, hair, chair, sun, and other non living things are included. For example, the Sun rises in the east. In this example, the word sun does not define any particular gender.

What is the gender of nouns and examples?

The grammatical gender of nouns helps in classifying nouns. In some of the languages, they have different genders for different nouns. For example- the Spanish language poses masculine gender for pencil and feminine gender for the table. In English, there is no gender assigned to any word.  

Gender for animals 

Is a dog a boy or girl? There are so many different questions that may arise about the gender of an animal. It is essential to know the gender of animals whether they are masculine or feminine gender. With the help of behaviors of animals, it can be used to identify the gender of an animal. For example, Male dogs fight over female dogs, female dogs protect and show care towards their young than male dogs. Male are more aggressive than females. These differences in behavior are useful in the determination of animal gender. 

In animals, Lion comes under the masculine gender and the lioness falls under the feminine gender. Similarly, the rooster is masculine gender and the hen is feminine gender. 

Conclusion 

Gender is an important chapter for language proficiency-English.  For the understanding of gender, it is important to study this chapter. To differentiate different types of the gender of humans, animals, and other non-living things, this chapter is vital. In the discussion, the overview of gender has been given with proper types and examples. One needs to study this chapter to clearly understand the concept of gender.