&gt; So the whole statement seems based on not understanding what &quot;gender&quot; is at all.<p>Your parent was just saying gender is unnecessary, and you did not answer anything to disprove that, or to prove that they were once needed.<p>For instance (speaking of Latin), why is Lapis (stone) masculine but Saxum (stone) neuter?<p>The Romans could have chosen to place all new words on the 2nd declension neuter (the simplest) but instead it (Classical Latin) created 3 more 3rd declension variants on top of the existing ones! And it was more productive, in this 3rd declension, in assigning masculine and feminine rather than neutral, which the 3rd declension also supported!<p>So what is the reason for that?