You might be interested in this article: <a href="https://partner.sciencenorway.no/cas-centre-for-advanced-study-gender-language/do-we-really-need-grammatical-gender/1576053#:~:text=Many%20languages%20have%20this%20system,is%20irrelevant%20for%20its%20gender." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://partner.sciencenorway.no/cas-centre-for-advanced-study-gender-language/do-we-really-need-grammatical-gender/1576053#:~:text=Many%20languages%20have%20this%20system,is%20irrelevant%20for%20its%20gender.</a>;. I agree with it that the ending of a word often determines what gender it is and not a "feeling" that some things are masculine, feminine, or neuter. All words in German with the endings -heit, -keit, -ung are feminine. It's just a grammatical category and Germans don't regard abstract concepts like Freiheit (freedom), Möglichkeit (possibility) and Vermutung (assumption) as being "female". You could ask all the same why some languages have definite and indefinite articles, have cases, tenses, conjugate their verbs, have prepositions etc.

Because way back in the mist of time, you could not prior to science and knowledge ascribe a god as being an inanimate thing. Our humanity dictated that it could only be what we understood a he or a she.

This then got extended when languages evolved into giving inanimate objects the same genders as gods.

And as languages developed further some more modern languages thought it would be better to put genders into the more modern languages. English has absorbed languages but it as not modernised it; it is still the ancient language we have always spoken.

There endeth my little theory.

You can often tell the gender of an English writer not by the feminine or masculine grammar or linguistic endings, but by the words and phrases they choose, the tone and the style of writing.

It is mostly always obvious with native English speakers who contribute regularly to italki, and is usually obvious to other native born English speakers and writers, ignoring their names which are not always an indication if they have an avatar.

To that extent yes, but how about actual male and female persons, Miriam? Is it really necessary for us to be constrained to announce our gender with every statement we make? Effectively that's what Hindi, Spanish and many other languages oblige us to do, while Bengali and Odia do not.

@Som

"To that extent yes, but how about actual male and female persons, Miriam? Is it really necessary for us to be constrained to announce our gender with every statement we make?"

Well, as there are languages that can do without grammatical gender, it's obviously not innately necessary for human beings to announce their gender with every statement they make but there seem to be people who don't want to let go of gendered language as you can see in reactions against gender-neutral language.