Editing Grammatical gender (section)

==== Grammatical gender need not match natural gender ====
{{unreferenced section|find=grammatical gender|find2=different from natural gender|date=June 2023}}
The ''grammatical gender'' of a noun does not always coincide with its natural gender. An example of this is the [[German language|German]] word {{wikt-lang|de|Mädchen}} ("girl"); this is derived from {{wikt-lang|de|Magd}} ("maiden"), [[Germanic Umlaut|umlaut]]ed to {{lang|de|Mäd-}} with the [[diminutive suffix]] {{lang|de|-chen}}, and this suffix always makes the noun grammatically neuter. Hence the grammatical gender of {{lang|de|Mädchen}} is neuter, although its natural gender is feminine (because it refers to a female person).

Other examples include:
* [[Old English]] {{wikt-lang|ang|wīf}} (neuter) and {{wikt-lang|ang|wīfmann}} (masculine), meaning "woman"
* [[German language|German]] {{wikt-lang|de|Weib}} (neuter), meaning "woman" (the word is now pejorative and generally replaced with {{lang|de|die Frau}}, originally 'lady', feminine of obsolete {{lang|de|der [[wikt:Appendix:Proto-Germanic/frawjô|Fro]]}}, meaning 'lord')
* [[Irish language|Irish]] {{lang|ga|cailín}} (masculine) meaning "girl", and {{lang|ga|stail}} (feminine) meaning "stallion"
* [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] {{lang|pt|mulherão}} (masculine), meaning "voluptuous woman"
* [[Scottish Gaelic language|Scottish Gaelic]] {{lang|gd|boireannach}} (masculine), meaning "woman"
* [[Slovene language|Slovenian]] {{lang|sl|dekle}} (neuter), meaning "girl"
* [[Polish language|Polish]] {{lang|pl|babsztyl}} (masculine), meaning "unpleasant (usually old and ugly) woman"
*[[Czech language|Czech]] {{lang|cs|děvče}} (neuter), meaning "a young girl"
Normally, such exceptions are a small minority.

When a noun with conflicting natural and grammatical gender is the antecedent of a pronoun, it may not be clear which gender of pronoun to choose. There is a certain tendency to keep the grammatical gender when a close back-reference is made, but to switch to natural gender when the reference is further away. For example, in German, the sentences "The girl has come home from school. She is now doing her homework" can be translated in two ways:
* {{lang|de|Das <u>Mädchen</u> (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. '''Es''' (n.) macht jetzt '''seine''' (n.) Hausaufgaben.}}
* {{lang|de|Das <u>Mädchen</u> (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. '''Sie''' (f.) macht jetzt '''ihre''' (f.) Hausaufgaben.}}
Though the second sentence may appear grammatically incorrect ([[Synesis|constructio ad sensum]]), it is common in speech. With one or more intervening sentences, the second form becomes even more likely. However, a switch to the natural gender is never possible with articles and ''attributive'' pronouns or adjectives. Thus it can never be correct to say {{lang|de|*eine Mädchen}} ("a girl" – with female indefinite article) or {{lang|de|*diese kleine Mädchen}} ("this little girl" – with female demonstrative pronoun and adjective).

This phenomenon is quite popular in Slavic languages: for example Polish {{wikt-lang|pl|kreatura}} (deprecative "creature") is feminine but can be used to refer to both man (masculine gender), woman (feminine gender), child (neuter gender) or even animate nouns (e.g. a dog being masculine). Similarly with other deprecatory nouns as {{wikt-lang|pl|pierdoła}}, {{wikt-lang|pl|ciapa}}, {{wikt-lang|pl|łamaga}}, {{wikt-lang|pl|łajza}}, {{wikt-lang|pl|niezdara}} ("wuss, klutz"); {{wikt-lang|pl|niemowa}} ("mute") can be used deprecatively as described previously, and then can be used for verbs marked for the male and female genders.