Editing Noun class (section)

== Noun classes versus grammatical gender ==
{{Further|Grammatical gender}}
The term "[[Grammatical gender|gender]]", as used by some linguists, refers to a noun-class system composed with two, three, or four classes, particularly if the classification is semantically based on a distinction between masculine and feminine. Genders are then considered a sub-class of noun classes.  Not all linguists recognize a distinction between noun-classes and genders, however, and instead use either the term "gender" or "noun class" for both.

Sometimes the distinction can drift over time. For instance, in Danish, the main dialects merged the three original genders down to a total of two genders. Some other dialects merged all three genders down to almost a one gender similar to English, but kept the neuter adjective form for uncountable nouns (which are all neuter in Danish). This effectively created a noun class system of countable and uncountable nouns reflected in adjectives. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://dialekt.ku.dk/dialekter/dialekttraek/navneordenes_koen/|language=da|publisher=Copenhagen University, Centre for Dialect Research|title=Naveneordernes køn|date=22 April 2015 |trans-title=The genders of the nouns}}</ref>