I'd love to understand how the grammatical gender was chosen.

It has to do with the vowel in ends in, e and a are feminine, I and o are masculine, can't remember u. It was in Italian and I am assuming any romance languages.

No it doesn't have anything to do with the vowel it ends in. French underwent a great deal of word reduction throughout its history so the last syllable of a French word generally corresponds to the next to last syllable of Italian and Spanish words. As a consequence, the ending of a French word doesn't indicate the gender at all. There are a few patterns that could help guess the gender of a few words (-ette is a feminine ending, while -et is the masculine equivalent), but in general, that's not a reliable method. There are a lot of masculine words that end in a E, there are very few words that end in a O or U and vowels do not indicate gender.

Generally feminine and masculine words in Italian are as Rosalba has already clearly described. Thank you.

Grammatical gender was chosen by a few different factors. In Latin, there were three genders, bit modern romance languages have simplified that to two. The gender is mostly chosen by the ending of the word. However, some word endings changed over time, but the gender wasn't reassigned. Also, foreign words are always masculine. So you have El Problema, because problem ends with a feminine word ending, but the word comes from Greek not Latin, so it's a foreign word.

My female French professor liked to point out that in French “problem” is masculine but “solution” is feminine😊 Le problème et la solution.

Coincidence? I think not

Out of a gender-fluid hat?

Would that make mustaches and bras transgender?

No, since they don't change gender. Also, an important point to stress is that grammatical gender is the gender of the word, not the gender of what the word describes. Mustache and bra being English words don't have a grammatical gender. The words moustache (f) and soutien-gorge (m) do have a grammatical gender, but not the object they describe.

I do, in fact, know that mustaches are not trans. The gender of words is different from the gender of people. I was, as wonky so astutely pointed out, making a joke.

I know that you were making a joke and it's a good thing you know the difference. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't know that difference. Confusing sex and grammatical gender is one of the most common mistake learners do, and I would guess it's even more common among non learners. So a healthy reminder doesn't hurt.

They were making a joke.

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Yes. Vagina and breasts are both masculine words in french. Try and make sense of that 😏🤷🏼‍♀️🤯

Also Spanish: necktie is feminine but dress is masculine

Same! Nevertheless, I still can’t understand why Spanish dresses are masculine

I mean... during the Roman empire all men wore robes/skirts/dresses, and only barbarians wore pants. Does clothing really need a gender?

I think they were joking...I hope they were joking ><

From What I Know And Understood: God Created Man In His Image. Then Used Man's Rib To Create The First Female. Just A Thought 🤔🤔🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️