Carmen and Bhuto?
The problem is that whoever decided to introduce gender into IE language was un idiota.
Is “lumberjack” also feminine?
But how did the Romans determine that *this *Thing, well, that’s obviously a first declension Thing, while *that *one looks more like a third ?
“I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear papa!”
The various nouns would have developed patterns of declension first and then been organized by observant grammarians into discrete groups.
Speaking of zombies. Only just realized it. Also, it’s a metaphor, not an attribute.
jtur88 (post 20):
I had understood that “el dia” is the only Latin-origin noun ending with -a that is masculine.
*
*
Here are some. Looks like “mapa” and “mañana” are the only ones not derived from Latin.
el carisma
el clima
el cólera
el dilema
el drama
el estigma
el genoma
el mañana (=the future)
el mapa
el melisma
el síntoma
**HeyHomie (post 28):
How big a fool would I look if I were to confuse the masculine and feminine articles - for example, said "el mano" in casual conversation?
As pointed out upthread (yellowjacketcoder, post 30), there might be a problem if the change in article gives the word a different meaning (corte, capital, frente), but context is everything.
**
**
Colibri (posts 32 and 34):
Although pene (penis) is masculine, another common term, verga, is feminine. Coño, a vulgar term for the feminine genitalia, is masculine.
And chocho!
*
*
My favorite is la papa (the potato) and el papa (the Pope).
I think it’d be “el Papa” (capital “p”) since there’s only one (at a given time).
**
**
robert columbia (post 42):
The problem is that whoever decided to introduce gender into IE language was un idiota.
According to the RAE, it’s an adjective (not a noun), so it’d translate as “idiotic,” rather than “idiot.”
“El cólera” is only for the disease, for cólera as in “anger” it’s “la cólera”, as in “Canta, oh musa, la cólera del pelida Aquiles”
Frodo: Thanks! Ignorance fought.
Translation of the title of a book by Eric Gurney:
- Como vivir con un perro neurotico y con un gato egoista *
“gato egoista” es redundante.
¡De acuerdo! :rolleyes:
But if you go for keeping the original structure un idiota (where idiota works as a noun, something that can be done with any adjective referring to living beings), “an imbecile” or “an idiot” work.
Los gatos no pueden ser egoístas, ni egocéntricos. Simplemente saben que son el centro del universo.
Cats can’t be either selfish or self-centered. They just know they’re the center of the universe.
That’s incorrect. Spanish rarely capitalizes even proper nouns of this kind. This Spanish Wiki article) doesn’t capitalize it, and neither does this Colombian newspaper even when referring to papa Francisco.
Well, I know that. The book’s original title (two were combined in the Spanish translation) was * How to Live with a Calculating Cat. *
German has something similar: der See (masc.) is “the lake”, but die See (fem.) is “the sea”. In this case the same root noun uses different genders to map to different types of the same general concept–a body of water. This sort of thing is otherwise very rare in German, if it exists at all.
How does one use el mar and la mar in Spanish?
It is not nearly as defined. My understanding is that el mar is the most usual, while la mar is more of a poetic usage.
Gotta join the party here. If you are guapa you can be una modelo
My own take on it. La mar is how those who live from the sea call “her”, poets do it imitating their use.