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Does Spanish have a neuter gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 41 10 August 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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My estimate is that about half of the Spanish learning resources I have pored over say there is a neuter gender, and half (particularly those which are a more of an overwiew), say it does not. I have always been really surprised about this seeming lack of agreement amongst linguists or language course developers.
Is there any official stance on this by the RAE (Real Academia)? Or by any other linguistic body? For those that have no knowledge of Spanish, when an abstract noun is formed from an adjective, it is assigned neither to the masculine nor the feminine gender: lo básico lo ideal lo genuino lo malo lo hermoso French and Portuguese clearly assign such nouns to the masculine gender ('o bom' / 'le bon' ). I'm not sure about Italian but I would predict it is like French/Portuguese. Romanian is said to have a neuter gender, but then it is explained that it is in reality marked by the masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, so no '3rd form' exists, which it does in Spanish. I am not familiar with Catalan, Mirandese, Walloon, or other minority romance languages to say if a similar phenomenon to this in Spanish exists. So... Is it a neuter gender or not? At this point, your opinions are just as good as those of the so-called "experts", who can't seem to agree. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GRagazzo Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4962 days ago 115 posts - 168 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 2 of 41 10 August 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it is a neuter gender since it uses neither el nor la. There are other words
such as aquello, esto, and eso which are all neuter. And of course there is ello which is neuter form of él and ella. My Spanish teacher told me that Spanish only uses the neuter for abstract ideas and that it is not very common. Italian for the most part is like French/Portuguese. But it acts like Romanian for certain nouns for example il dito(the finger) which is masculine in the singular becomes le dita(the fingers) which uses le(feminine plural) but the ending a(which is the feminine singular). Another example is il uovo(the egg) and le uova(the eggs) Edited by GRagazzo on 10 August 2012 at 4:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 41 10 August 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes it's a neuter gender. I think the grammarians and linguists agree about that. What they probably don't agree about is what best way to present grammar is. Therefore, some of them won't mention the neuter at all for pedagogical reasons.
"Normal" nouns are always either feminine or masculine, or both. You won't find any nouns listed as neuter in the dictionary. It's not easy to find your way around the RAE web site but if you go to the Dicccionario panhispánico de dudas here http://lema.rae.es/dpd/, then click "artículos temáticos, then "pronombres personales tónicos" or "pronombres parsonales átonos", you'll find neuter pronouns listed. Catalan also has a neuter gender. Edited by tractor on 10 August 2012 at 7:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zetko86 Heptaglot Newbie Italy Joined 4510 days ago 18 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Slovenian, Italian*, English, Serbo-Croatian, FrenchB1, GermanB2, Russian Studies: Japanese, Hungarian | Message 4 of 41 10 August 2012 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting, but I wonder if we say that Spanish has a neuter gender, when uses "lo" as article, what about some Italian words like:
Lo zio (the uncle) Lo studente (the student) Should we say that Italian too has a neutral gender? This words are considered masculine in Italian, even if the article is different, because Italian only has two grammatical genders (at least so they teach at school). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 41 10 August 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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lo zio or lo sport are nouns, while lo malo, lo hermoso are adjectives turned into nouns. lo is used for purely phonetical reasons in Italian, kinda like in Spanish el can be used with feminine nouns (el agua, but las aguas, el agua fría).
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 41 10 August 2012 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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If "lo" nouns are considered masculine as regards adjective inflection etc. (e.g. lo zio - il vecchio zio, right?), I'd just say that the article is different (for whatever reasons).
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| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 41 11 August 2012 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Italian uses lo or l' purely for reasons of euphony. It is not the same phenomenon as with the Spanish adjetival nouns. Spanish doesn't really bother with phonetical harmony the way French, Portuguese, or Italian do.
And grammatically, "lo" nouns in Spanish can have no plural forms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4871 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 8 of 41 11 August 2012 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not really a traditional student of Spanish, so take what I say however you like. I learned Latin and then basically engineered my knowledge of Spanish out of what I know about Latin and context. Forms like "lo bueno" feel neuter to me on a gut level. Latin works this way too—and I know that just 'cuz Latin did it doesn't mean Spanish necessarily does it the same. But that's my instinctive read on it. (Also, Latin neuter nouns in the plural ended with "a" so if a few stragglers in Italian do, that makes enough sense to me. Especially since the neuter gender feels pretty tied up with masculine in Latin.) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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