Re: OT Re: Linguistics
From: Gerald P. Rodríguez (geraldpr@cybermesa.com)
Sun Jun 29 16:37:29 2008
Laureno,
Felicitaciones! Que bueno que hoy España derrotó a Alemania.
Gerald P. Rodríguez, M.D., FACOG
Santa Fe
>----- Original Message -----
From: "Laureano Folgar" <lfolgar@correovia.com>
To: "Multiple recipients of list OB-GYN-L" <ob-gyn-l@mail.obgyn.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 12:51 PM
Subject: OT Re: Linguistics
> 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
>>
