Depends on how you count. For 200 years people can't agree :)
The most common count is 3 because in singular nominative there's 3 - male/female/neutral - same as in English, but he/she/it applies to all nouns not only to people.
In plural nominative there's 2 - malepersonal and nonmalepersonal. So that's 5 in total.
But some people join singular and plural kinds to get 4 - malepersonal, malenonpersonal, female, neutral.
But that's only in nominative. Polish has 7 cases and in some of them the pronouns and endings behave differently depending on whether the group is grammatically male animals or grammaticaly male things.
So some people separate these as well and get 5 (if you join singular and plural kinds) or 7 if you don't.
It's fucked up when you think about it, but you don't think about it when you speak - you just know what sounds good and use that.
It causes a lot of problems with translations from other languages - you need more information that authors usually provide to know what pronouns and verb/adjective endings should be used.
Sorry, I should probably have stated that since the beginning. I am native I just was surprised about 5 cases. I've never heard about the 2 latter one you've mentioned. I've been told in school that male is just male, doesn't matter it it's person or object. But I am engineer, not a linguist so it may be as you say. Either way, interesting. Thanks for sharing.
The most common count is 3 because in singular nominative there's 3 - male/female/neutral - same as in English, but he/she/it applies to all nouns not only to people.
In plural nominative there's 2 - malepersonal and nonmalepersonal. So that's 5 in total.
But some people join singular and plural kinds to get 4 - malepersonal, malenonpersonal, female, neutral.
But that's only in nominative. Polish has 7 cases and in some of them the pronouns and endings behave differently depending on whether the group is grammatically male animals or grammaticaly male things.
So some people separate these as well and get 5 (if you join singular and plural kinds) or 7 if you don't.
It's fucked up when you think about it, but you don't think about it when you speak - you just know what sounds good and use that.
It causes a lot of problems with translations from other languages - you need more information that authors usually provide to know what pronouns and verb/adjective endings should be used.