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In most languages, gender plays a much more important role than in English. Nevertheless, it is possible to refer to a noun using its gender.
The ship was launched on 4 October 1853. Tayleur left Liverpool on 19 January 1854, on her maiden voyage.
How does one know that "ship" is feminine? Are there masculine nouns?
Well, gender matters with anaphors (Steve shaved him/*herself) and pronouns with antecedents, (Steve retrieved his/*her book).
The ship example is very rare in modern English, and is probably a holdover from when English had real grammatical gender (i.e., when it was more like German).
Clearly, gender is mandatory for personal nouns and less so for (sexed) animals. Non-living nouns that use gendered pronouns are boats and countries (the "ship of state"). There are probably a handful of other exceptions, but I can't think of any off hand. I will add them later if I do.
For the most part all non-living nouns use "it" and "its" for pronouns.
I always thought this was an odd and antiquated rule, and in fact the wiki article on it mentions that it is waning in use. I don't know any masculine nouns except in figurative language.
Well, third-person pronouns are examples of gender. I have heard and used the ship example, but more for stylistic purposes than to be better understood; the same applies to countries. I would argue that gender still is as important, though simply no longer surfaces. I think there are some very interesting experiments here.
Another example of gender occurs in the relative pronouns who and which. We divide groups of things into these two categories based on whether or not something is animate, or as I like to think, how human-like it is. Compare: "the friend, who", "the dog, who/which", "the shoe, which".
Traditionally ships are only considered female when they are fitted out with mast, rope, sail, other things which make it seaworthy. Until that point the empty hull is considered male.
This is thought to relate to the times where a man would be aboard ship for long months away from home and would refer to his ship as if it were a family member/lover as his own wife/lover could not be with him.
