Is the Wye Female?

Modern English is a simplified version of an older language. This older language described rivers as female. The simplification of English grammar, during its development from Proto-Germanic by the arrival of Danish Vikings who spoke Old Norse, led to the loss of inflectional endings which indicated gender, simplification of articles and use of neuter pronoun "it,"   So today, modern English has no “grammar of animacy” to use Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful phrase, instead it deadens the natural world to a lifeless ‘it’.  

This blog describes the River Wye in feminine terms, because indigenous languages all over the world, including Welsh, Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic, all gender rivers as feminine and use feminine pronouns to describe them.  

These languages, all much older than modern English, were spoken by people whose lives depended upon their intimate knowledge and observation of nature; and they chose to gender all aspects of nature.  They understood nature to be alive, made of many ‘beings’ not lots of ‘things’, therefore they gendered every aspect of the natural world.  

These beings, rocks, rivers, rain, which today are termed “inanimate objects” were previously recognised as living beings, and gendered to help enable our relationship and communication with them.  The ancestors of this landscape and this language, described rocks, rain and rivers as female.

One of the most fundamental changes needed today, is our recognition of the world as a community of interconnected, sacred, living beings, not a collection of inanimate objects.  In recognition of this need, and in the hope of helping to restore a different relationship with nature, this blog describes the River Wye in feminine terms.