Who assigns gender to new or adopted words

[Brewerpablo]

I''m learning Spanish but this question applies to many languages.
Many or most languages other than English associate a gender with nouns eg el sombrero, la pelicula etc.
Sometimes new words enter a language, either newly created or borrowed/adopted from other languages. Who assigns a gender to a word. Cars, for example, didn't always exist in Spain, so someone created the word "carro" and made it masculine, rather than "carra" and made it female. Transistors did not always exist, but Spanish appropriated the word exactly from English and made it masculine. How does that happen?
I know that France has a bureau of language purity which "cleans up" foreign words that creep into the language, but this isn't the same (or is it?)
Not having genders for nouns, and having to have adjectives agree with them is one of the few ways that English is easier than Spanish!

[gmads]

An interesting question. One would think that this just comes to be in an organic way, by how people feel sounds the best, and then surviving through time.

At the site of the RAE I found this quite long article in Spanish:
El género de los anglicismos en español actual.

Maybe someone would like to read it and share here the conclusions

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  ㆍespañol ㆍgeneral ㆍsaber

[Explorer]

Another thing to keep in mind is that some loanwords do not always have the same gender in all Spanish-speaking countries. For example, the word "internet" in Spain is masculine (el internet), while in Latin America it is usually feminine (la internet).

[IceVajal]

The word Joghurt is rooted in Turkish, but it depends on which part of Germany you live the gender changes! Also in Austria and Switzerland they use one or the other gender. Where I grew up it was maskulin, even Duden (the most important dictionary in Germany) lists it with all three genders!

So I guess, gmads is right. It depends on the people using it first and probably these days on media, too, due to the massive exposure.

[gmads]

True, it also depends on the country or the region, some say "la calor" and others "el calor," and yes, now that we have "influencers," also on how famous or "important" is the person that starts saying a new word. Regarding Internet, I use "el."

At the following entry RAE explains why interfaz is a feminine noun: interfaz: "debe emplearse en femenino, ya que esta palabra incluye en su forma el sustantivo femenino faz."

[Chrisinom]

I can only answer this question as far as German is concerned. There is not one rule that determines the gender of new words from another language but there are certain fundamental rules. The gender of foreign words (there are three genders in German like in Latin, masculine, feminine, neuter) often corresponds to the gender of origin: Die Contenance (French), der Alligator (Spanish), das Museum (Latin). Very often the foreign word takes the gender of a German correspondent, even if its gender is different in the language it comes from: Das Chanson (la chanson in French, but das Lied in German), die Boullion (le bouillon / die Suppe), das Souvenir (le souvenir, das Andenken). This also applies to words taken from English: die Power (die Kraft), der Button (der Knopf), die High Society (die vornehme Gesellschaft).
As far as suffixes are concerned, there are also certain tendencies: Words ending in - ge usually are feminine (die Garage, die Blamage), words ending in -ment are neuter (das Statement, das Fundament), words ending in -ion are feminine (die Revolution, die Administration), words ending in - er or - or are masculine (der Computer, der Administrator, der Ventilator).
Finally, Nominalisations of English one-syllable verbs are always masculine (der Chat, der Drink), Nominalisations ending in -ing are neuter (das Happening, das Timing, das Casting).

[b05aplmun.ca]

This is a side issue, but "carro" meant "cart" and "carriage" before it meant "car." See https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/tra ... spen=carro and go down to "Additional Translations."

[Chrisinom]

"Car" comes from Latin carrus, which originates from Gallic karros (Vehicle). With regard to articles, there are two German words of the same origin, die Karre and der Karren (barrow, carriage, but also car in colloquial German, often in a deprecating sense). It is not considered a foreign word any longer since it came into German before the year 1000 (Old High German karra). The different genders can be explained by the ending: Most words ending in -e are feminine in German, words ending in -en usually are masculine, like Wagen (Car, varriage, wagon). This also explains why the brands of cars are masculine: der Mercedes, der Porsche, der Volkswagen etc., although it is das Auto.

[TammiP]

I''m learning Spanish but this question applies to many languages.
Many or most languages other than English associate a gender with nouns eg el sombrero, la pelicula etc.
Sometimes new words enter a language, either newly created or borrowed/adopted from other languages. Who assigns a gender to a word. Cars, for example, didn't always exist in Spain, so someone created the word "carro" and made it masculine, rather than "carra" and made it female. Transistors did not always exist, but Spanish appropriated the word exactly from English and made it masculine. How does that happen?
I know that France has a bureau of language purity which "cleans up" foreign words that creep into the language, but this isn't the same (or is it?)
Not having genders for nouns, and having to have adjectives agree with them is one of the few ways that English is easier than Spanish!

That's a good question. Im learning Spanish and find it odd that objects have to be made male or female. Seems like it would be a lot easier if they would just stick to people and animals as male and female. Seems strange to turn objects into male/female when they are neither.

[gmads]

Im learning Spanish and find it odd that objects have to be made male or female.

As an Anglo-Saxon, nine centuries ago, you would not have found it odd... Gender in English: sunne ("sun," was a feminine word), "tungol" ("star," was a neuter word), "wifmann" ("woman," was a masculine word).

[LICA98]

in Russian it's fairly simple as the gender mostly depends on the ending of the word, if it ends in

а or я - feminine (except if it's a male person like папа)
another vowel - neuter
consonant - masculine

the only time it's complicated is when it ends in a soft sign (ь), apparently -жь, -шь, -чь are always feminine but for the rest there doesn't seem to be a rule