Editing Grammatical gender (section)

=== Meaningless ===
In other cases, a word may be usable in multiple genders indifferently. For example, in [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] the word {{lang|bg|пу̀стош}}, ({{transliteration|bg|pustosh}}, "wilderness") may be either masculine (definite form {{lang|bg|пу̀стоша}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshə}}) or feminine (definite form {{lang|bg|пустошта̀}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshta}}) without any change in meaning and no preference in usage.

In Norwegian, many nouns can be either feminine or masculine according to the dialect, level of formality or whim of the speaker/writer. Even the two written forms of the language have many nouns whose gender is optional. Choosing the masculine gender will often seem more formal than using the feminine.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}} This might be because before the creation of [[Norwegian Nynorsk]] and [[Norwegian Bokmål]] in the late 19th century, Norwegians wrote in Danish, which has lost the feminine gender, thus usage of the masculine gender (corresponding exactly to Danish common gender in conjugation in Norwegian Bokmål) is more formal sounding to modern Norwegians.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}}

The word for "sun" can be another example. One might decline it masculine: {{lang|no|En sol, solen, soler, solene}}, or feminine: {{lang|no|Ei sol, sola, soler, solene}}, in [[Norwegian Bokmål]]. The same goes for a lot of common words like {{lang|no|bok}} (book), {{lang|no|dukke}} (doll), {{lang|no|bøtte}} (bucket) and so forth. Many of the words where it is possible to choose gender are inanimate objects that one might suspect would be conjugated with the neuter gender. Nouns conjugated with the neuter gender cannot normally be conjugated as feminine or masculine in Norwegian. There is also a slight tendency towards using the masculine indefinite article even when choosing the feminine conjugation of a noun in many eastern Norwegian dialects. For instance, the word for "girl" is declined: {{lang|no|En jente, jenta, jenter, jentene}}.