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Does Spanish have a neuter gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4681 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 25 of 41 16 August 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes. But that doesn't mean that Spanish has a neuter gender like other languages do. If the question is: Does Spanish have a neuter gender? The short answer is not. Because if we say the contrary, we are assuming that neuter nouns and adjectives are morphological o semantically possible in Spanish and they are not. But still, the long answer to the same question would be: No, it does not have a neuter gender, but certain articles and pronouns have some singular forms that are called "neutral". género neutro 1. m. Gram. En algunas lenguas indoeuropeas, el de los sustantivos no clasificados como masculinos ni femeninos y el de los pronombres que los representan o que designan conjuntos sin noción de persona. En español no existen sustantivos neutros, ni hay formas neutras especiales en la flexión del adjetivo; solo el artículo, el pronombre personal de tercera persona, los demostrativos y algunos otros pronombres tienen formas neutras diferenciadas en singular. Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados --- So, if we state that Spanish has a neuter gender based on the existence of a handful of "neutral" pronouns, with no morphological evidence whatsoever, we can also safely say that English does have at least two different gender based on the same, or even bigger, amount of evidence: he/she/: her/his/ him/her; his/hers; mother/father; sister/brother; waiter/waitress and so on. If somebody is still doubtful about this, (s)he can read what the RAE says about the gender in Spanish. The RAE doesn't even use the word "neutral" in the whole article. Edited by Heriotza on 16 August 2012 at 8:47pm 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 26 of 41 16 August 2012 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Putting the label "neuter" on a few pronouns and an article is not the same as saying that Spanish has a full-blown
three-gender system like Latin, German or Norwegian. I have to agree with s_allard when he says: "Really, this is not worth arguing about." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 27 of 41 16 August 2012 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I for one have really enjoyed this thread and learned a lot. Besides, who is
arguing? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 29 of 41 17 August 2012 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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That's, Heriotza.
As I said posts ago, the neuter gender isn't important at all in Spanish. Nonetheless, the querie was if it does exist. And the answer isn't just like "no", but "no, but...". That's the response I wanted to offer. I agree with your opinion again, since neuter words are just remains, but that doesn't mind there are not any neutral words. I guess that people who study Spanish don't understand why there are neuter words if Spanish is supposed not to have a neuter gender, he, he. Because of that I tried to give my best in the explanation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4771 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 30 of 41 17 August 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Note that French has some nouns that can be masculine or feminine: horaire, synoptique, élastique (rarely), flasque, après-midi (among others).
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 31 of 41 17 August 2012 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dagane is right when he/she says that the answer to the question "Does Spanish have a neuter gender?" is "No,
but..." because there are no neuter nouns, but there are indeed some neuter pronouns and a neuter article. A noun like "mar" is not neuter. It is masculine or feminine depending on the circumstances. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 32 of 41 20 August 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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There isn't a one-word answer (such as 'yes' or 'no'). It is 'yes, but...' which is pretty much the same as 'no, but...'
Spanish has neutral pronouns and determinants (see examples above), so there's a grammatical neutral gender. The catch is, any grammatically neutral noun comes from an adjective (off the top of my head, watch out for counterexamples). Other than that, genuine nouns always have a grammatically feminine or masculine gender, which in turn may or may not be related to that of the subject when there's one. Actually there are quite a few possibilities: -'Purely feminine': la mujer, la niña... -'Purely masculine': el chico... -Arbitrarily masculine or feminine: la mesa, el lápiz... -'Common' gender (will be masculine sometimes, feminine sometimes): el mar / la mar, el calor / la calor, etc. -'Ambiguous' gender (no distinct masculine and feminine forms): el juez / la juez, el dentista / la dentista, el intérprete / la intérprete... -'Epicene' (one grammatical gender is used to represent both sexes for most except commonplace animals): el cocodrilo macho y el cocodrilo hembra, or la tortuga macho y la tortuga hembra, etc... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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