Nuts and Bolts: a livelier gender.

Gender has caused problems for a long time. Why, it even caused problems when it was merely a grammatical term. 

It's not easy to remember that a Spanish chair is feminine but German one masculine, nor to avoid feeling slightly aggrieved that while the French words amour (love) and orgue (organ) are masculine when they're singular, they become feminine when in the plural.

Norwegian has words where you can choose the gender, and your choice might depend upon which district you live in, or how formal you want to sound (choosing the masculine gender tends to be more formal).

For the purposes of today, though, I'd just like to point out that some languages differentiate between animate and inanimate genders.

On the face of it, this seems like a perfectly reasonable.

Though which gender you'd put a leaf in, or a glacier, for example, I have not the faintest idea.

Word To Use Today: gender. This is basically the same word as genus, which means sort.