&gt; <i>I have no idea why so many other languages force you to stick a gender on something without any genitals.</i><p>Btw, Swedish has a nice version of this, the masculine and feminine genders have merged together into the common gender, and then the other is the neutral gender. For example:<p><pre><code>    en katt (a cat, common)
    ett hus (a house, neutral)
</code></pre>
You are still burdened by having to memorize the gender for each noun, but at least you are spared from having to think the words as masculine or feminine.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Swedish_grammar#Nouns" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Swedish_grammar#Nouns</a>