Systems of Gender Assignment
Nouns and pronouns · one world map for each value
WALS codes 257 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “No gender system”, covers 145 of them (56%); the least frequent, “Semantic assignment”, covers 53.
That value is most frequent in North America (80% of the 40 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (22% of 49).
All 10 Altaic languages coded have “No gender system”.
Niger-Congo is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 16 of 23.
No gender system145 languages · 56%
Semantic assignment53 languages · 21%
Semantic and formal assignment59 languages · 23%
One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.
By macro-area
| Value | Africa | Eurasia | Papunesia | Australia | North America | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No gender system | 11 | 42 | 32 | 13 | 32 | 15 |
| Semantic assignment | 5 | 16 | 6 | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| Semantic and formal assignment | 33 | 20 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| All values | 49 | 78 | 41 | 24 | 40 | 25 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Niger-Congo | 23 | Semantic and formal assignment | 70% |
| Austronesian | 21 | No gender system | 95% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 20 | Semantic and formal assignment | 95% |
| Indo-European | 18 | Semantic and formal assignment | 78% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 14 | No gender system | 79% |
| Altaic | 10 | No gender system | 100% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 10 | No gender system | 100% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 9 | No gender system | 89% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- No gender system: Finnish, Turkish, Indonesian, Mandarin, Hungarian, Georgian
- Semantic assignment: English, Abkhaz, Tagalog, Kannada, Hixkaryana, Burushaski
- Semantic and formal assignment: French, Russian, Spanish, German, Greek (Modern), Hausa