Ships and boats are referred to using feminine pronouns. Are houses masculine, feminine or neutral? Please provide evidence for your answer, a Google search didn't help me.
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4Neutral, ie referred to as "it". Boats are neutral too - it may be common to call a boat "she" but this is just a romantic tradition, not a feature of the language. – Max Williams Apr 11 '16 at 13:23
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1It's always safe to assume inanimate, mindless objects don't have gender in English. Calling ships "she" is a freak exception that isn't even required, just an optional bit of personification. – herisson Apr 11 '16 at 13:23
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1The use of gendered terms for inanimate objects has all but vanished. That said, when they were used, they were almost universally feminine. I'm not aware of any masculine parallels to the construction, e.g., "The sea was a harsh mistress that day, she was....". – Dan Bron Apr 11 '16 at 13:23
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@DanBron: Death is usually personified as male. I think Time is also, to a lesser degree. Of course, these are abstract concepts, rather than concrete inanimate objects. – herisson Apr 11 '16 at 13:26
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@sumelic True, Mother Nature and Father Time, but I think that only really applies to the actual personifications, "time incarnate", unlike applying feminine pronouns to the literal sea itself. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '16 at 13:28
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Only your Feng Shui master can determine the gender of your house... – GEdgar Apr 11 '16 at 14:42
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Relevant: When referring to a noun, when does the gender matter? – herisson Apr 11 '16 at 15:01
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Related: Pronoun question: referring to inanimate objects as 'he' or 'she' and Is English “genderless” or are inanimate nouns just neuter by default? – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '16 at 15:51
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1Also: Referring to objects as “she” and Is it a good practice to refer to countries, ships etc using the feminine form? – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '16 at 15:55
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@Mari-LouA I was just curious if houses are feminine because vehicles (like ships are). That's all there was to it. – foxinsocks Apr 11 '16 at 16:11
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If you were Italian, I might have understood because "casa" is feminine, but the exception to the rule that inanimate objects are genderless are few and far between: ships, boats, cars, and weather elements. See top answer in Pronoun question: referring to inanimate objects as 'he' or 'she' for a detailed list. – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '16 at 16:15
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This is what the Chicago Manual of Style has to say:
5.14 Noun gender
English nouns have no true gender as that property is understood in many other languages. For example, whether a noun refers to a masculine or feminine person or thing does not determine the form of the article as it does in French, German, Spanish, and other languages. Still, some English words--almost exclusively denoting a person or an animal--are inherently masculine {uncle}{rooster}{lad} or feminine {aunt}{hen}{lass} and take the gender-appropriate pronouns. But by far, most English nouns are common in gender and may refer to either sex {relative}{chicken}{child}. Many words that once were considered strictly masculine--especially words associated with jobs or professions--have been accepted as common in gender over time {author}{executor}{proprietor}. Similarly, many forms made feminine by the addition of a suffix {aviatrix} have been abandoned
House is gender neutral.
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1Chicago has a most righteous discussion of avoiding gender bias in writing: 5.221-5.230. If you have access online, hardcover, or go to the library, I found this to be imperative for good gender-neutral prose. – Stu W Apr 11 '16 at 15:11
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Houses have no special gender, they are neuter. Ships had often female names, that's why they are feminine. Houses fall under the general rule: Things are neuter.
I looked around on the Internet about Gender in English. Wikipedia is indigestible, other websites bring only half of the topic. I found no site that mentions ships, cars, country names like France, sun, moon, etc.
You have to look into a real grammar, chapter nouns, gender.
Added: from en.wikipedia - grammatical gender - 14.1.1 English: They mention that countries, ships, and other vehicles are feminine. No mention of sun (he, analogue to Latin sol,solis m), and moon (she, analogue to Latin luna f) in poetry.
rogermue
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This is true, but it's better offered as a comment, not as an answer. Unless you want to dig up the evidence OP asked for, which isn't a small task. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '16 at 13:24
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Often, when I'm writing a post and switch to the Internet and go back to my post, it has vanished. So I save what I have written and then try to find something on the Internet. – rogermue Apr 11 '16 at 13:35
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3Well, that shouldn't happen. In fact, SE should save a (private) draft for you automatically, every Z seconds, which will be available for further editing and ultimately publishing from anywhere you log in. If you can reproduce this bug, it's very much worth your time to report it on [Meta.SE]. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '16 at 13:37
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2@rogermue Please provide evidence for your answer. "I looked around on the Internet" doesn't help me, because that's exactly what I did, and I didn't find the information I was looking for. – foxinsocks Apr 11 '16 at 14:41
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You can find something in en.wikipedia, grammatical gender, point 14.1.1 English en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender – rogermue Apr 11 '16 at 15:29
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@rogermue Would you mind incorporating the relevant material from that source into your answer? Particularly after OP's comment above yours, I feel that my first comment in this thread still stands. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '16 at 15:37