Since no neolatin language (except Romanian perhaps) has kept the grammatical neuter, all of them went for either masculine or feminine (which is the grammatical gender for the Romanian equivalent of Fr <la mer>) — probably after a period of hesitation (or specialisation) which, for instance, affected old castilian <mar> and is still affecting catalan <mar>.
You find the same phenomenon with :
La (n) <lac-lactis> —> Fr (m) <le lait>, Lo (m) <ul lacc> & Wa (m) <li lècê> vs Sp (f) <la leche>
La (m or n) <sal-salis> —> Fr (m) <le sel> & Po (m) <o sal> vs Oc (f) <la sal> & Sp (f) <la sal>
I think it is more appropriate for it to be a feminine word. I never understood why it's masculine in Spanish. Just like I don't understand why "cerveza" should be feminine, while "vino" is masculine. That doesn't make any sense. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
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I think it is more appropriate for it to be a feminine word.
Words like <mer>, <table>, <voiture>, <ordinateur>, <téléphone>, <fatigue>, <déconceptualisation>, <embarras>, <avenir> & <fscalité> are
*SEMANTIC* NEUTERS. They refer to things, not to humans nor to animals. Things are deprived of sex and thus cannot deemed to be sexed : sexlessness (a very anthropomorphic prospect anyway...) is part of their semantism. So lexies referring to things can be neither *SEMANTIC* MASCULINES nor *SEMANTIC* FEMININES.
However <mer>, <table>, <voiture>, <fatigue>, <déconceptualisation> & <fscalité> are *GRAMMATICAL* FEMININES while <ordinateur>, <téléphone>, <embarras> & <avenir> are *GRAMMATICAL* MASCULINES.
Porthos wrote:
I never understood why it's masculine in Spanish.
Learning the history of a language may be a good start if you want to understand why a word turns out to be a grammatical masculine rather than a grammatical feminine.
On the other hand, language history is totally worthless if you want to know if a word is a semantic masculine (<boy>, <man>, <bull>, <grandfather> etc) or a semantic feminine (<woman>, <girl>, <my aunt>, <chairwoman> etc) or a semantic strong neuter (<aircraft>, <chair>, <letter>, <screen> etc) or a semantic weak neuter (<French people>, <they>, <the Smiths>, <my family> etc).
Porthos wrote:
Just like I don't understand why "cerveza" should be feminine, while "vino" is masculine. That doesn't make any sense.
Well, morphology (in addition to language history) can help. In the case of Spanish, nouns ending with <o> are usually grammatical masculines while those ending with <a> are generally grammatical feminines — exceptions abound of course.
Yes, exceptions do abound. And they can be quite troubling for a new student of Spanish. I remember. I still use the wrong article for some words, because I'll assume that a word which ends in "o" is masculine, but that is not necessarily true. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
Intéressant. Donc la variation quant au genre issue de l'ancien castillan s'est maintenue jusqu'à nos jours. Sais-tu si cette variation est neutre ou bien reflète une spécialisation stylistique (poésie etc) voire sémantique peut-être ?
Je sais que les hispanophones disent plus souvent "el mar" que "la mar", mais on m'as toujours appris que les deux formes existent. c'est possible que "la mar" soit une forme plus litteraire que orale.
Je sais pas pourquoi mais la plupart des mots qui se terminent par –e sont souvent féminins.
Je crois que c’est pareil en espagnol ou en italien où ceux qui se terminent par –a sont féminins tandis que ceux qui se finissent par –o sont masculins. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Je sais que les hispanophones disent plus souvent "el mar" que "la mar", mais on m'as toujours appris que les deux formes existent. c'est possible que "la mar" soit une forme plus litteraire que orale.
Yes, you're right. But "la mar" is quite used orally as well. Almost every fisherman here in Peru uses "la mar" instead of "el mar".
Pedro de Perú
_________________ 'Romance language learning campaign'.
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