ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଲିଙ୍ଗ ସଂରଚନା : ଏକ ବ୍ୟାକରଣଗତ ବିଶ୍ଳେଷଣ (Odia Gender System: A Grammatical Description)

There is always confusion between 'gender' and 'sex' among the people speaking Odia. They assume that both the words are synonymous to each other. However, semantically, as per Odia Grammar, this view is not correct. Odia is a unique and very rich language. Earlier grammar books stated that there are three kinds of gender classification in Odia, namely: Masculine, Feminine and neuter genders. Such a distinction is not mostly amenable in linguistics. To overcome such confusions, linguistic analysis is generally determined to consider the analysis of grammar and dictionary. The reason being, 'gender' is a category of noun and the meaning of gender is pervasive to its usability that merely matters to the rigidly in the normal Odia conversation. Keeping because of such nuances, the present study attempts to revisit the earlier classification of gender and find that its distinctions are restricted only to dictionaries which have no impact in real life Odia conversation. However, the use of gender classification only marks the differences while writing and when the speaker needs to be conscious of the opposite gender while speaking to others.