Grammatical gender

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In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender;^[1] the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the genders of that language.

Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex or gender. According to one estimate, gender is used in approximately half of the world's languages.^[2] According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words."^[3][4][5]