OT Re: Linguistics
From: Laureano Folgar (lfolgar@correovia.com)
Sun Jun 29 13:50:34 2008
In these cases, "el" is feminine, it is used because the word begins
with a strong a, like "el aguila, el hacha, etc". The feminine article
"la" have his origin in the Latin demonstrative "illa", who become "ela"
at old Spanish. Years ago, it loose the e at the beginning converting in
la, but with words beginning with a, it loose the final a becoming "el"
(feminine).
OT: Republicans, invite Zapatero to visit Obama, he is a jinx,
politician he visit, politician who loose. Democrat avoid him.:-) All
Spain ask him not to go to the final Eurocup 2008, Germany-Spain, it
will begin in seconds.
Good luck el.
L. Folgar
Efrain Ramirez escribió:
> Gender in Spanish is not always defined by the article - "agua" is
> feminine but the article used is "el" - el agua está fría (feminine) the
> water is cold.. but when you switch to plural... you have to say "las
> aguas" not "los aguas"?? BTW Laureano - read this moments ago..
>
> http://au.news.yahoo.com/080629/2/17hkz.html...
>
> Ef
>
> At Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Laureano Folgar wrote:
>
>> Gender of nouns normally have no rules, so everyone thinks theirs are
>> the right ones. For example, German-Spanish dictionaries usually
>> includes articles to define gender, for a Spaniard "Das Kinder" have no
>> sense at all.
>> We think English is a confusing language because we have minimal words
>> with some difference between writing and spelling, quite different to
>> English.
>>
>> As curiosity, in Spain, we can´t say we speak Spanish, it´s not
>> political correct. Spanish are the idioms of Spain (Castilian, Basque,
>> Catalan, Galician, etc), so call Spanish to Spanish is considered as if
>> you say the others languages are not of Spain, so you always see
>> Castilian when referred to Spanish. No comment.
>>
>> Best regards
>> L. Folgar
>>
>> Meenan, Anna L. escribió:
>>
>>> And they say English is a confusing language.
>>>
>>> Anna Meenan, MD
>>>
>>> On Thu, June 26, 2008 9:46 am, Gerald P. Rodríguez wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ef would probably give a better reason, Ann. But best I can tell the
>>>> anatomic words in Spanish have been assigned either masculine or feminine
>>>> without regard to the gender to which they belong. Thus it's masculine
>>>> "el
>>>> utero" for uterus, but it's "la prostata" for prostate. And it's "el pie"
>>>> (foot), but it's "la cabeza" (head). Just to throw a curve into the mix,
>>>> it's "la mano" (hand). Then there is, as in English often more than one
>>>> label for a body part, so "matriz" is perfectly understood by Spanish
>>>> speakers as meaning uterus and it's "la matriz," not "el matriz."
>>>> Perhaps,
>>>> though I speculate, gender assignment flows from the original derivation
>>>> of
>>>> the word--Latin vs. Greek?
>>>>
>>>> Gerald P. Rodriguez, M.D., FACOG
>>>> Santa Fe
>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>
>
> --
> "I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying." - Michael Jordan
>
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