# Why "las" manos?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 5, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591 "2004-02-05T01:41:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gypsymoth3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gypsymoth3)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/1 "2004-02-05T01:41:25Z")
in my spanish II class yesterday, after i had been signed out, the teacher told my classmates that the article “las” is used with “manos” (spanish for “hands”). why is this? it’s obviously an exception to the rule, but what is the exception? are there other words that violate article rules?
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### Author:  [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/2 "2004-02-05T01:45:30Z")
Well, because the word “hand” (mano) is feminine. As far as I know, this is one of those “it just is” exceptions to the usual gender rules. And there are lots more! You can catch many of them by following the rule that nouns ending in -ma, -pa, or -ta are (usually) masculine.
ex. - el mapa, el problema, el atleta. (unless the athlete is female. Then it’s la atleta, and you get to be even more confused.)
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### Author:  [@gypsymoth3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gypsymoth3)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/3 "2004-02-05T02:02:23Z")
gha, and i thought _english_ rules were stupid.
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### Author:  [@TitoBenito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TitoBenito)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/4 "2004-02-05T02:31:36Z")
Because Manus was feminine in latin. The -us at the end wasn’t like the masculine second declension ending -us in campus, but a lunger and -us that was part of the fourth declension. I don’t know anything about linguistics but I’d guess all the -us endings became -o endings in spanish, but the gender stayed the same.
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### Author:  [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/5 "2004-02-05T04:10:25Z")
Not to mention the fun of _el día_.
_Mi hermanota_ is a Spanish speaking lawyer and has occasionally had to convince her Latino clients that she is, indeed, _una abogado_. It comes from the past participle of _abogar_, FWIW.
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### Author:  [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/6 "2004-02-05T04:41:03Z")
> [@TitoBenito](#):
>
> Because Manus was feminine in latin. The -us at the end wasn’t like the masculine second declension ending -us in campus, but a lunger and -us that was part of the fourth declension. I don’t know anything about linguistics but I’d guess all the -us endings became -o endings in spanish, but the gender stayed the same.
Even odder in Latin, the word ‘agricola’, which means farmer, declines in the first declension (which is feminine) but is a masculine word, with masculine adjectives. Likewise with a few others I can’t think of at the moment. Poena perhaps (poet).
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### Author:  [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/7 "2004-02-05T05:52:17Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#):
>
> Not to mention the fun of _el día_.
>
> _Mi hermanota_ is a Spanish speaking lawyer and has occasionally had to convince her Latino clients that she is, indeed, _una abogado_. It comes from the past participle of _abogar_, FWIW.
She would be _una abogada_, not _una abogado_. Most professions have female forms these days, e.g. juez/jueza, profesor/profesora. _Abogado_, I believe, comes directly from Latin _advocatus_.
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### Author:  [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/8 "2004-02-05T06:13:23Z")
She’s pretty firm, and I don’t argue, with the _abogado_ for both genders. I tend to agree with her. Of course, it just goes to show that all languages are changing with time to our chagrin or glee, as it will be.
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### Author:  [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/9 "2004-02-05T06:16:34Z")
Nice examples, **Dave914** , though. Maybe I have some ammo with which to argue…
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### Author:  [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/10 "2004-02-05T06:39:19Z")
As a general rule, most words that seem to defy their gender endings in Spanish are of Greek or other non-Latin origin, such as “el mapa”, “la radio”, or “el programa”.
Another funny thing is I have heard “little hands” as “las manitas” or “las manitos”.
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### Author:  [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/11 "2004-02-05T08:06:37Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#):
>
> _Mi hermanota_ is a Spanish speaking lawyer and has occasionally had to convince her Latino clients that she is, indeed, _una abogado_. It comes from the past participle of _abogar_, FWIW.
[Diccionarios.com](http://www.diccionarios.com) has this listing for the word:
> [@](#):
>
> **abogado,-a**
> **1** _nombre masculino y femenino_ lawyer, solicitor: _(tribunal supremo)_ barrister.
A female lawyer is certainly _una abogada_.
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### Author:  [@Melandry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melandry)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/12 "2004-02-05T15:28:13Z")
> [@Eonwe](#):
>
> Even odder in Latin, the word ‘agricola’, which means farmer, declines in the first declension (which is feminine) but is a masculine word, with masculine adjectives. Likewise with a few others I can’t think of at the moment. Poena perhaps (poet).
poeta = poet
poena = punishment, and is feminine
Other 1st declension masculines (all words for occupations):
nauta = sailor
pirata = pirate
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/13 "2004-02-05T15:28:53Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#):
>
> She’s pretty firm, and I don’t argue, with the _abogado_ for both genders. I tend to agree with her. Of course, it just goes to show that all languages are changing with time to our chagrin or glee, as it will be.
My _American Heritage_ Spanish/English Dictionary gives both forms, and _una abogada_ is quite definitely a currently accepted form here in Panama - I know some personally. Your hermanota is behind the times.
In addition to the examples mentioned above, abbreviated forms can result in apparent exceptions to the o/a rules: _una foto_, short for _una fotografía_; _una moto_, short for _una motocicleta_.
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### Author:  [@Faldage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faldage)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/14 "2004-02-05T15:38:35Z")
Also in Spanish you have _la foto_ but _foto_ is just a contraction of _fotografía_.
OTOH you have words like _el agua_ which are feminine. The rule here is that if the first syllable starts with a stressed _a_ the word takes the definite article _el_. It’s not really the masculine article, though. The feminine definite article was originally _ela_ and the _e_ eventually disappeared. But in the case of words starting with stressed _a_ the _e_ stayed and the _a_ merged with the _a_ of the following word.
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/15 "2004-02-05T15:41:14Z")
But turning to the larger question of why languages have such shocking irregularities, there is an interesting theory.
Uncommon words (take the English verb ‘to paint’) is regular because we don’t use it enough to remember any odd behavior of the verb. Meanwhile a common verb (like ‘to do’) remains irregular as heck simply because it is so widely used. We all remember that there is no ‘doed’ and so we use ‘did.’
So anyway, the idea is uncommon words become regular over time, while common words resist regularization.
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2004, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/16 "2004-02-05T17:59:53Z")
The word for _hand_ is also feminine in those Germanic languages that still have grammatical gender (I think German and Icelandic are the only two that still retain the full gender system). In German, most one-syllable nouns that end in a consonant are masculine or neuter, and form the plural by umlaut, and perhaps postfixing an _-e_. _Hand_ also behaves like a masculine in this respect. English had an umlaut plural of the word _hend_, as late as the Middle English period. All this suggests that _hand_ has been feminine since before the Germanic-Italian split.
We had a thread on this topic a couple of years ago but I can’t find it now.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2014, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/18 "2014-08-07T19:01:32Z")
> [@gypsymoth3](#):
>
> gha, and i thought _english_ rules were stupid.
There isn’t a spoken language out there where established rules are followed consistently. It’s quite aggravating to the anal-retentive among us.
More enlightened minds eventually figure out that for the most part grammatical rules are established _post hoc_ and/or out of some grammarian’s arse to explain why or describe how things are the way they are and hopefully guide how future things should be in a doomed quest for consistency.
There’s no internal logic to non-constructed languages. The man on the street just sez it like it fookin’ well is, roight ?
That goes quadruple if it’s a gendered language (like Spanish, French or German). In many cases, irregularities there are caused by a difference in outlook on the world between the speakers of the root language (mostly Latin in the case of Spanish) and the speakers of the more modern one. _Id est_, possibly the ancient Romans figured hands were inherently masculine in nature because they can hold a sword or some such, but the Spaniards intuitively pegged them as feminine because… something something sex.
Hence the discrepancy.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2014, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/20 "2014-08-07T19:20:45Z")
So is it el zombo, or la zomba?
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/21 "2014-08-07T19:33:33Z")
> [@syncrolecyne](#):
>
> As a general rule, most words that seem to defy their gender endings in Spanish are of Greek or other non-Latin origin, such as “el mapa”, “la radio”, or “el programa”.
>
> Another funny thing is I have heard “little hands” as “las manitas” or “las manitos”.
I was taught that masculine nouns that end in “a” in Spanish were typically of Greek origin. It might have to do with the native Greek declensions, or maybe some historical quirk.
E.g. el programa, el sistema, el esquema (the plan, or “scheme”), el idiota, el planeta (planet, from the Greek for “wanderer”), el tema (the theme), el clima (the climate), el cometa, el diorama, el aroma, el diagrama, el enigma, etc.
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2014, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-las-manos/227591/22 "2014-08-07T19:52:27Z")
I had understood that “el dia” is the only Latin-origin noun ending with -a that is masculine.
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