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No, it's just how it's always been, same with all the other grammar constructs like stemming, prepositions, anything. Often it doesn't convey any additional information and it's just a bitch to learn.
I mean, if your native language (or one you know very well) has gendered nouns, you may tend to think of inanimate objects as male or female - not all the time, but say, when writing poems and such.
Research also shows that we tend to associate inanimate objects with gendered qualities based on language. So if in your language "bridge" is male, you're more likely to associate bridges with being strong and tough, while someone whose language has female bridges tends to think of them as lean and elegant. It's a bit of a feedback loop that way.
But logically, no, no real reason or meaning. When adapting foreign words into the language, the tendency is to follow the habits of the receiving language. Such as if in your language most female nouns end with -a, then you'll probably use new words ending with -a also in the context or grammar of female gender.
Ed: obviously there's meaning if it refers to people, e.g. if "customer" has two variants based on gender - that's additional information of the actual gender of the person. Of course then there's the opposite issue if the gender of the person isn't known. Usually there's a fallback of some sort.
The research you are basing your third paragraph on was actually never published and its claims have remained controversial.
I recommend you check this great video on both grammatical gender and Boroditsky's article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q1qp4ioknI
Ah okay. I just vaguely remember reading about it ages ago. But as someone whose native language is gendered, I do agree with that assessment at least to a degree. Nouns do have certain tone to them which generally corresponds to their gender as well, such as what I mentioned, words ending with -a usually being feminine and just having that softer vibe than words ending on a consonant. Tho that depends on the particular language of course.
And I wouldn't underestimate the feedback loop from language to thinking in general. For example it's well documented how we remember colors is quite dependent on how they're named.
Well unless that was debunked as well, but considering both linguistics and art are my hobbies, that might shatter my entire world view heh.
Yup, and that's why when it's reasonable i try to cut down on those vestigial parts. For example US english uses the word "the" way more than UK english, so as an american I try to omit "the" whenever it wouldn't sound totally wacky. For example British people say "he's in hospital" but americans say "he's in the hospital". UK people say "in future", while Americans say "in the future". In these cases "the" adds nothing to the sentence.