rowaway93
It stands to reason that the feminin came to be at the boundary between these.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
PS: This is fun ... Der Mensch -> Die Familie -> Das Dorf. Der Krieger, die Krieger, das Kriegen. Der Aktionär -> die Aktie. Die Aktionärinnen ... das Aktienpaket. Der Karren (car), Die Karre (load), das Ankarren, das Herangekarrte, das Karree (See [2] for more on four wheels, strange animism, etc. Ultimately inconclusive).
Note that the pluralizing morpheme -en was written -in in old german. Also note that many case inflections come out as -en, so I suppose that female forms were in the objectified part of speech more often, where the gender is not reflected in the article (den Kindern, Männern, Frauen).
Is "gimme the lego over there" strange? I think it is, and if it is, then it's an interesting dater point to support this hypothesis.
it's not halting?
Linguistics is worse: It's quite literally based on hearsay.
Edit: I think that's relevant. Perhaps mathematical skill is diametrically opposed to linguistic faculty.
Of course that's nonsense, but it's an observation inferred from the completely separate treatment of these subjects -- and other stereotypes. At least they are seperated to such an effect that being good at one of these is not perceived as prerequisite for the other. If it wasn't for informatics I would never heard the word "logic" in school. And even then, CS is very much focused on number crunching.
In fact, being good at one is often purported as apology a pro pos being bad at the other. I'm not sure why such a schism exists.