Gender switch between West and North Germanic
Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Rua
Yes, but what is the original gender? Why did a change occur, why some words and not others, i.e. what qualities (in form or semantics) do they share? And, if they did coexist, why are they so clearly polarized between groups?
(No pressure) ;) Seriously, I often wish I could just peek back in time and just listen to how these languages really were. Reconstructing from such incomplete data is a pain.
Maybe there was no original gender. Many modern languages have productive processes of word derivation that are not specific to gender. For example, Dutch -schap can be both feminine and neuter, and different words that are derived with it have different genders. gemeenschap is feminine gender while gereedschap is neuter.