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Computers have no practical purpose. But they can be interesting toys that show us what is not important. Mjb at nomlang.org
An old hippy in Cadaques, Spain, once pointed out to me that the genders in European languages are not categories, but rather indicate a relationship of that object or idea to another object or idea in the opposite or reciprocal category. A simple example of this is “La luna” and “El sol” in Spanish - the moon and the sun, feminine and masculine. In various mythologies and symbolic systems, these 2 bodies are considered to be husband and wife and to have complementary properties.
I don't really know how ancient peoples decided that the sun had more masculine properties and therefore the moon must be feminine (or vice-versa) but the idea of the sun and moon being complementary and so having a special relationship to each other, seems natural and logical.
As far as I know, Australian Aboriginal languages do not have European-style genders but they do have the concept of relationship categories. One example is the Yolngu concept of Yothu-yindi (which also the name of a more-or-less well-known Australian band). Yothu-yindi means child-mother and is the description of a reciprocal relationship, but the relationship not only applies to people but also to all sorts of things in the Yolngu universe: for example, a river can be the yothu (child) for a mountain, which is it’s yindi (mother). Here we can see the similarity with the romance language gender categories.
One question is: if a new object or person enters the Yolgnu word, how do people decide which relationship category to place it in? A hint for this may be in the Warlpiri sub-moieties and how they are applied to new-comers. Below is the list of male and female subsection names:
Japaljarri Napaljarri
Jungarrayi Nungarrayi
Jupurrurla Nupurrurla
Jakamarra Nakamarra
Japangardi Napangardi
Japanangka Napanangka
Jangala Nangala
Jampijinpa Nampijinpa
I include them here because they sound nice, and I think it is cool that the female subsection name just substitutes an “N” for a “J”. When a new-comer starts to spend a significant amount of time in a Warlpiri community or with Warlpiri people, the people may assign a subsection to that person. This seems to be done by looking at this new persons existing relationships with Warlpiri people: so if some white guy marries a Warlpiri girl, then they may give him the correct subsection so that his marriage or relationship is “legal ” within Warlpiri traditional law. This (somewhat arbitrary) assignment of a subsection name has a flow-on effect, in the sense that other people linked to the white guy, such as his own family, will then acquire the correct subsection in relation to him.
The point of this is to show how the entire world can acquire a coherent set of relationship categories by propagating from existing things and people. Another factor is more poetic: A river inherently seems like the child of a mountain because it flows from the mountain, is “born” on the mountain, and is smaller than the mountain. In the same way, the moon seems less strident or aggressive than the sun and may suggest intrinsic feminine qualities, as well as being linked to the female menstrual cycle.
These relationships also provide a framework for correct behavior - the male should only marry the female, and Japaljarri should probably only marry Napanangka (which reduces Japaljarri's choices to one eigth of the availabe women). These days men marry men, women marry women, men marry men who say they are women or want to become women or vice versa, and when you ask a young central Australian Aboriginal person their skin-name or subsection name, they may just reply humourously: “slut”.
That is the state of our world, where the river is poisoned and is no longer the beautiful “yothu” of it’s mountain “yindi”.