Gender / Noun Class Tag
What grammatical class does this noun belong to?
意味
A grammatical category such as masculine/feminine/neuter or a noun class that can affect articles, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, or agreement.
見分け方
Notice whether nouns carry a class that other words must match.
例
masculine|feminine|neuter|class noun
la casa roja|der Mann|une table
The adjective changes to match the noun.
Visual guide
Noun has a class tag: casa [feminine] Matching words copy it: la casa roja la = feminine article roja = feminine adjective Class → agreement
Class systems vary: No class: no tag to match Gender: masc/fem/neut der Mann, une table Many classes: class 1/2/... Agreement may affect: article adjective pronoun verb
言語別ビュー
母語の仕組み
Japanese has no grammatical gender or noun classes.
先生は親切です。
The teacher is kind.
学習言語では
English has natural gender in many pronouns and some words, but nouns do not belong to a broad grammatical gender class system.
The actor said he was ready.
he = natural gender reference
Learners from gendered languages may look for noun gender where English usually has none.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.