Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan теrmez state university department of philology and teaching languages: on theme

1. NOUNS IN OLD ENGLISH
Old English nouns are grouped by grammatical gender, and inflect based on case and number.
Gender
Old English still had all three genders of Proto-Indo-European: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Each noun belongs to one of the three genders, while adjectives and determiners take different forms depending on the gender of the noun they describe. The word for "the" or "that" is sē with a masculine noun, sēo with a feminine noun, and þæt with a neuter noun. Adjectives change endings: for instance, since hring ("ring") is masculine and cuppe ("cup") is feminine, a golden ring is gylden hring, while a golden cup is gyldenu cuppe.
Perhaps the strangest aspect for modern speakers is that the words for "he" (hē) and "she" (hēo) also mean "it." Hē refers back to masculine nouns, hēo to feminine nouns, reserving the neuter pronoun hit for nouns that are grammatically neuter. That means even inanimate objects are frequently called "he" or "she."^[4] See the following sentence, with the masculine noun snāw:

Old English	Mē līcaþ sē snāw for þon þe hē dēþ þā burg stille.
Literal gloss	Me pleases the snow because he does the city quiet.
Translation	I like the snow because it makes the city quiet.

Compare this parallel sentence, where the neuter noun fȳr is referred to with hit:

Old English	Mē līcaþ þæt fȳr for þon þe hit dēþ þā burg hlūde.
Translation	I like the fire because it makes the city loud.

Only a few nouns referring to people have a grammatical gender that does not match their natural gender, as in the neuter word mæġden ("girl"). In such cases, adjectives and determiners follow grammatical gender, but pronouns follow natural gender: Þæt mæġden sēo þǣr stent, canst þū hīe? ("The girl who [feminine] is standing there, do you know her?").^[5]
When two nouns have different genders, adjectives and determiners that refer to them together are inflected neuter: Hlīsa and spēd bēoþ twieċġu ("Fame [masculine] and success [feminine] are double-edged [neuter plural]").^[6]