"What is it?" and "Who is it?" They give names to things, people, and places. Examples

Feminine 
Gender neutral 
man 
woman 
person 
father 
mother 
parent 
boy 
girl 
child 
uncle 
aunt 
husband 
wife 
spouse 
actor 
actress 
prince 
princess 
waiter 
waitress 
server 
rooster 
hen 
chicken 
stallion 
mare 
horse 

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How does gender work in foreign languages? 
In English we do not assign a gender to words. But how does gender work in foreign languages? For Italians, 
boys (il bambino) are masculine. Girls (la bambina), on the other hand, are feminine. Germans, for example, 
assign three different genders to the three basic eating utensils: fork (die Gabel) is feminine. A knife (das 
Messer) is neutral. And, finally, a spoon (der Löffel) is masculine. Strangely, German doesn’t assign a gender 
to a young lady (das Mädchen).
Of course, German is not the only language that considers lifeless objects “male” or “female.” It also is not the 
only language that assigns living beings a grammatical gender unrelated to their sex. In Irish, for example, a 
girl (cailín) is masculine, while a stallion (stail) is feminine. The list goes on. If you want to know 
more, check 
this short article
.
Why is a ship called “she”? 
Interestingly, in Modern English, there are some word groups which are considered ‘feminine’, at least in a 
poetic or quaint sense. These include ships, countries and churches, for example.
Therefore, in English, ships are sometimes referred to as “she”. For example, “I travelled from England to 
New York on the Queen Elizabeth; she (the Queen Elizabeth) is a great ship.”
A naval historian 
provides an explanation
 why this might be the case. As we have seen, other languages 
have “male”, “female” and sometimes “neuter” words. But, English generally uses a neutral words such as 
“the” or “it”. So, making ships female and calling them “she” is an example of old English-speaking practice. 
Why? Because it gives a gender to an inanimate object. It’s worth noting that Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 
now calls ships “it”.
There are some other examples of gender in English language, too:
• 
I love my car. She (the car) is my greatest passion.
• 
France is popular with her (France’s) neighbours at the moment.
• 
I travelled from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth; she (the Queen Elizabeth) is a great ship.
So, if you’re a non-native speaker of English and want to impress someone with your linguistic knowledge, 
make a reference to a ship or country using the word ‘she’. “The Titanic sank in 1912, didn’t 
she?” But, you have to be careful. It might make you seem a tiny bit pretentious. It is also not very gender 
inclusive.