#blitzarnio513 (corrigez-moi svp)
civic cave
cunning dew
i think it's just because it's culturally and conceptually more associated with the feminine, and since we don't distinguish gender in English, the more commonly used form became default
in more formal publications, they still sometimes write naïf
just like they sometimes write rôle
amber trail
I think it's more that we tend to pick one version and stick with it, and feminine forms often are "easier" to anglicize or stick out more (like people saying blonde for men)
Meanwhile things that don't affect pronunciation are more likely to be ambiguous (fiancé·e, which anglophones always manage to use the wrong one for some reason???)
cunning dew
i think again, this is just because we associate blondness with femininity
blond is also a word in english and in more frequent use than naïf and it's pronounced exactly the same as blonde, so it can't be a matter of pronunciation
fierce roost
Fair enough, interesting points
fierce roost
I think it's more that we tend to pick one version and stick with it, and femini...
It’s supposed to be fiancé for a man and fiancée for a woman, right?
cunning dew
yes
plenty of exceptions but generally the difference between masculine and feminine adjectives is the addition of an e in the feminine form
like half the time it has no effect on pronunciation like in fiancé(e), the other half it effects the preceding sound
but it is never itself pronounced
so blond vs blonde and naïf vs naïve are distinguished by their final consonants rather than by a vowel
alpine pulsar
The equivalent to a French adjective in -if/-ive, when it exists in English, always ends with -ive.
This is probably because most of them are borrowed directly from Latin instead of French, but I suppose it could have influenced the way naive was borrowed.
stray oriole
i think it's just because it's culturally and conceptually more associated with ...
I'm nearly 100% certain that this is wrong - it just doesn't track with how linguistics works. We don't use word forms because of 'associations' with genders.
As you've said, English doesn't have genders, so there's no reason we'd associate one form with one gender or the other.
I can't find an etymological explanation of the process that went down, but linguistically the most probable thing that would happen is that there was some sort of phonological process that pushed towards the -ve ending.
silent bloom
If I were to speculate, I would say that English speakers chose the feminine form "naïve" due to its easier and more natural pronunciation compared to "naïf". Both words derive from the Latin "nativus", meaning "native" or "natural". The alignment of the French feminine words "native" and "naïve" with English pronunciation patterns likely influenced this choice.
Similarly, "natural" evolved from the Latin "nativus" too and French "naturel/naturelle", English chose the masculine "naturel" and over time changing the "e" to an "a", forming the English word "natural" to simplify pronunciation. In the original Latin word "nativus", the "v" sound may have also played a role in favoring these forms "native" and "naïve". It may just be my perception, but "native" and "naïve" seem more familiar and comfortable in English than "natif" and "naïf".
English speakers tend to adapt loanwords to fit more comfortably within our phonetic and orthographic systems 
In Italian we say Nativo and Nativa for native and we can use "naïve" too but we prefer ingenuo and ingenua 😹
cunning hearth
The thing that's often absent in the discussion is the factor of re-Latinisation: Did English actually absorb the feminine, or did it actually absorb the masculine before later scholars re-Latinised it? For example – if Wiktionary is to be trusted – the adjective active was attested in Middle English as actyf, taking the French masculine, before scholars re-Latinised it into active today from the Latin activus. It just so happens that the adapted form corresponds to the French feminine.
Moreover, there's also the impact of regularisation, analogies, and folk etymologies at play. English formed Latinate verbs by backforming them from nouns: activation was reanalysed as activat -ion and so we got activate. Since those forms have a voiced V in them, why not actyf too? That's not too far-fetched considering that we have several folk etymologies like soverain being reanalysed as sovereign because people thought -ain was related to the word reign (Latin regnum, meaning 'rule' or 'regime' or 'kingdom') even though they're actually unrelated; Middle French soverain (Modern French souverain) came from Late Latin superãnus (super + -ãnus, the suffix meaning 'related/pertaining to' so literally 'pertaining to (something) above').
It can also happen that English takes from both French and Latin, that's not something peculiar; the language has doublets like these. Take chieftain and captain, both taken from Late Latin capitãneus but while the latter was a borrowing, the former was inherited and so shows sound changes that isn't present in the borrowing. Another example would be ratio and reason, the former taken directly from Latin ratiō and the latter taken from French reason.
I don't think it's that the feminine more closely fits with English phonology, it doesn't make sense to me. English is fine with final /f/ like in words such as 'reef, roof, fluff', so 'actif' wouldn't have had any issues. I just think that the Latinisation of adjectives happened to coincide with the feminine adjective which makes sense. Final /a/ was retained in Old French for some time, and it provided a barrier when French endings were devoiced or removed. Proto-Romance's actívo, actíva would've ended up as actív, actíva which then were reduced again into actif, active. Latinisation would've involved replacing the -us ending by -e (advocãtus -> advocate, magistrãtus -> magistrate, etc) which would've given us the same form as the French feminine.
cunning dew
Are you guys forgetting that naif literally exists in english?
according to the OED, it's first recorded use was in the late 16th C.
a word like active was borrowed earlier and showed clear alternation in the appearance of the form unrelated to gendr
we can see that the feminine nature of an adjective can be borrowed into english in a way that doesn't see a parallel in french
I'm sure it's some combination of both effects. Clearly it's not as gendered as petite, but it's also not as not gendered as fiancé(e). The idea that the perception of gendered words in English is not how "linguistics" works is ridiculous.
It is, in fact, English rather than French which semantically genders its adjectives describing people. The reason why that petite sees a different gendered use in English is precisely that it has no grammatical gender, while all adjectives in French must be able to be applied to both grammatical gender which in the case of people also link up with semantic gender
Thus, beautiful can have a feminine association and handsome a masculine association in English, but this simply isn't possible in French. Sometimes we want to translate beau as handsome and belle as beautiful strictly to retain their gendered associations, but this breaks down quickly when a man is described when we start talking about a belle ame or a beau coeur where the gendered associations carve out a distinction which doesn't exist in French
stray oriole
The trouble here is that you're making a (frankly sexist) assumption that being "naïve" is somehow more closely associated with femininity than masculinity.
cunning dew
It's not sexist to to accurately describe our culture
stray oriole
Personally, if I had to associate being naïve with any gender, I'd associate it with men, not women.
But I don't think that the machanism here has anything to do with gender, regardless
stray oriole
I'm sure it's some combination of both effects. Clearly it's not as gendered as ...
Linguistics, you don't need the scare quotes. It's a field of study.
stray oriole
Cool, than you'll recognize that the explanation that you've put forward is less probable than something explained by phonology or by reborrowing from Latin (as Bertie put forward.)
cunning dew
don't appeal to an authority you don't have ¯_(ツ)_/¯
stray oriole
I mean, I don't claim to be an expert, but I do have a BA in linguistics.
What you've put forward simply doesn't sound plausible.
cunning hearth
Are you guys forgetting that naif literally exists in english?
In the citations you gave out, it was given out as varying forms: 'naife, naif, actiue, actyf, actyfe, actif', and so on. English spelling didn't fully standardise until the 19th century when public schooling was implemented throughout Europe (which spread to the United States). That's ample time for Latinisation, especially since that's the Victorian era where another wave of Latinisation hit the UK (and the US, they were culturally aligned until the early 20th century). For 'blond/blonde', sure, but that's just one adjective compared to a swath of others. If 'naif' became 'naive' because it was seen as more 'culturally feminine' – whatever that means – why did other Latinate adjectives follow suit? Did it happen to all adjectives? If it happened to every adjective, why wasn't 'blond/blonde' affected? I'm excluding 'fiancé/fiancée' because that has become a noun in French: « mon fiancé / ma fiancée » so it's entirely possible English absorbed both nouns instead of absorbing the adjective.
My issue with the idea of 'culturally/conceptually feminine' is that it's attempting to draw a link between grammatical and sociological gender, which I don't think is appropriate. The word « personne » is grammatically feminine but can be used to refer to anyone. If I were to refer to a man as « personne », I'd have to use feminine agreements; does that mean that I am culturally/conceptually diminishing his masculinity or gender by using a feminine noun with feminine agreements?
cunning dew
you guys are forgetting some things 1. English doesn't have grammatical gender 2. the social perception of a word does effect how the gender is borrowed into English (see: petite) 3. both naif and naive exist as forms in English both spoken and written while actif and active don't even though as you point out the forms standardized around a similar time
it's very pernicious this idea that there is a complete independence between culture and syntax
cunning hearth
you guys are forgetting some things 1. English doesn't have grammatical gender 2...
The social perception of a word does affect how the gender is borrowed, sure, but I don't think you can make an argument that applies to 'naive'. Are women seen as more 'naive' than men? If you're going to argue that line, you have to know where this applies and where it doesn't because I can equally ask you if women tend to destroy, fight, invade things because their adjectival forms are also -ve (destructive, combative, invasive).
'active' does exist, it's literally in your excerpt
