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How to memorize noun genders | ||
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 41 of 51 06 August 2010 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hello there,
Actually, that's not completely accurate. In Spanish, feminine nouns starting with a stressed a (I said stress or prosodic accent, not the diacritic symbol, that may be present or not according to the corresponding rules) in singular form change the gender of preceding articles to masculine to prevent cacophony. You can verify this by checking adjectives; they still have to agree on gender with the noun. So, for example it is "el águila blancA" and not "el águila blancO", and of course it always is "las águilas blancas". Another example off the top of my head: "arma" (weapon, this one can be "white", too) or, as you just said, arte.
Bebé is a masculine noun, using it as feminine is just bad Spanish. Sartén is feminine, but its occasional use as masculine is acknowledged by the RAE.
Maybe it's not such an excellent dictionary :) May I ask what dictionary are you using? Certainly you won't find "Rumanía" or "Rumania" in the online version of the DRAE, but certainly its inhabitants are listed as living in "Rumanía", see http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_HTML=2&TIPO _BUS=3&LEMA=rumano
For me it's a huge difference when there is some kind of normative authority trying to protect the language from blatant misuses. Remeber, always try and check what you learn, esp. if it comes from certain sources :) (edit: typo) Edited by mrwarper on 06 August 2010 at 6:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ThisIsGina Groupie United Kingdom languageblogbygina.w Joined 5323 days ago 56 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Greek, German, French | Message 42 of 51 07 August 2010 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning it with the article works for me. And listening to music helps because if I remember the word used in a song where it also has an adjective, the adjective can help me remember the gender quickly (this is useful in languages without articles).
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| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5788 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 43 of 51 07 August 2010 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I am, of course, well aware of the fact that (almost all)* feminine nouns beginning with a stressed "a sound" take the articles el/un in the singular, but in actual fact this is NOT what happens with arte, please note b.t.w. that I did NOT cite article use as evidence for my comment that arte is usually masculine in the singular. Let's look at an example of ""el" being used for feminine nouns that begin with a stressed "a" sound: las aguas but el agua. Now as you mention nouns like this are still feminine, hence sentences like el agua está fría. Compare this with arte, it is always feminine in the plural (las bellas artes = the fine arts), but USUALLY masculine in the singular "el arte de esta región es riquísimo (in both my posts I put "usually" because you do sometimes come across feminine forms). Similarly, "the Cinema" is somtimes known as "el séptimo arte" in Spanish Please note that this is why I stated that the noun "arte" was strange, as opposed to claiming that Spanish had a number of "gender switching" words, which would have been the case had I merely been unaware of usage like "el agua". I consider myself only an intermediate speaker, but certainly I have been aware of the use of "el" with feminine nouns beginning with a "stressed a" sound since very early in my studies. Were I not aware of it I would have to consider myself a rank beginner with no right to advise other beginners on strategy. Finally the use of "el" with nouns such as agua or hacha in the singular has nothing to do with "avoiding cacophony", but rather has to do with the evolution of the Spanish definite article suite from Latin demonstratives (although many books happily repeat this incorrect notion). Specifically the "el" used in "el agua" and "el hacha" etc is NOT the same "el" as is used before masculine nouns, and is in fact only distantly related (it is very closely related to "la"). To oversimplify slightly (as there are doubtless subtleties to do with the Latin case system etc that I am unaware of, and we are only going to consider the singular articles) the definite articles in the Romance Languages evolved from the Latin words "ille" (masculine singular), and "illa" (feminine), which meant something like "that" as in "that dog is big" (my understanding is that Latin had no definite article). Over the centuries of sound shifts "ille" gradually shortened to "el" in Modern Spanish ("le" in French and "il" in Italian). "illa" shortened to la in French, Italian, and (usually) Spanish, but (in Spanish) before words beginning with a "stressed a" sound it shortened instead to el (something which makes sense if you try to say illa aqua very fast: illa aqua [that water] -> el agua [the water]). The use of un with such words is a fairly modern development (presumably by analogy) and so in older books you will read things like "una águila" (modern Spanish "un águila"). This whole topic has many subtle aspects, such as the fact hat you normally use "la" if the article is seperated from the noun (e.g. by an adjectve), "la misma águila". Off topic a little "ille" and "illa" are apparently also the source of the Spanish and Italian clitic pronouns lo and la
As I said in my previous post Bebé is indeed masculine in Spain (where I learnt my Spanish), I just thought it was interesting that a lot of L.Am speakers SEEM to change the noun's gender to reflect the baby's sex, regardless of what the dictionaries say I am not going to be crass enough to accuse millions of educated native speakers of not speaking their own language properly.
Collins-Complete-Unabridged-Spanish- Dictionary. I just checked it and (to my surprise) it lists both forms so in fact there is no mystery. My careless reading I guess. Apologies. I wonder if any native speakers could confirm my impression that rumanía is more common in Spain and rumania more common on L.Am television?
I don't really understand what you mean here, could you please clarify. Are you saying that both rumania and rumanía are wrong? I don't think they are (apart from my dictionary I heard rumanía often when I was in Spain, there are lots of Romanians there, and have heard rumania more than once on L.Am television programs.
Mmmm, I am not sure I agree with your stance here. I hear youngsters here in the U.K. saying things that sound incorrect to me all the time. One of my pet hates is hearing constructions like, "which I was going to do it (for people outside the U.K. yes, young people here REALLY DO say things like this!)." What is language change, and what is degradation? I have little doubt that sentences like my example will sound as awful to younger Yanks or Aussies as they do to 30+ Brits such as myself, yet I have even started to hear this construction used occasionally by younger presenters on BBC radio. When does a change become so accepted that it is correct? I remember my elders condemning usage such as using "hopefully" to mean "it is to be hoped" which sound correct to me because i grew up with them. All very complex, now in my OWN language I will go out on a limb and say that SOME of these changes should be stopped because they are just so damn ugly (like the colloquial British tendency to say things like "more better", still thankfully absent from the BBC; but in a foreign language I think it is a little arrogant to accuse native speakers of anything unless you are VERY advanced (which I am not, and to judge by the errors in your last post neither are you). And so, I re-iterate, only el bebé is correct in Spain, but MANY Latin Americans SEEM to use el bebé for male babies and la bebé for girls. I find this quite interesting. If I WERE to venture an opinion (something I shouldn't really do until my Spanish is near native standard) both systems seem perfectly logical to me (unlike the ugly redundancy of sentences like, "which I was already doing it" or "more better"). Finally I do strive to check what I learn, but occasional errors are unavoidable (you can see I actually thanked someone for a previous correction earlier in this thread, an error due to tiredness and cutting/pasting rather than ignorance b.t.w.), nevertheless at this point you have yet to convince me that I made any serious ones in my post above. * Above I said that MOST feminine nouns beginning with a "stressed a" sound take the definite article el. The exceptions include "la hache" (the letter "h"), la Haya (the Hague), la haz (surface [cognate of face as in surface]), women's names and a few more. Edited by Random review on 07 August 2010 at 3:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5788 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 44 of 51 07 August 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I stand by all the points I made above, but having just re-read it my tone now seems rude to me (due to an overreaction on my part).
I started to edit it, but it quickly became clear that in order to make all those same points in a neutral tone I would have to rewrite the whole thing, so instead I'll offer my apologies to mrwarper. It IS my fault for overreacting, I accept that, but can I please suggest that comments like, "Remember, always try and check what you learn," are very open to be interpreted as patronising (which I unfortunately did). Don't be embarrased about correcting me when it turns out I knew what I was talking about all along (assuming you agree on that!), I remember once correcting someone on another forum a couple of years ago, who said that you could use the subjunctive after verbs of believing and supposition in the affirmative in Spanish. *All* the textbooks (even university level text books) say that you use the subjunctive if it is negative (no creo que venga) and indicative if positive (creo que viene), and so I told them so. When they countered that they had heard native speakers say this I (arrogantly) replied that they couldn't have, either they were mistaken, or the people concerned were not native speakers. Then in the following year (with my mind now primed to notice it) I encountered several examples showing that they had been right! An example is the following sentence from the front cover of a "Mortadelo y Filemón" comic: "iVamos, vamos! ¿Qué le hace suponer que el nuevo sillón que le han traído al súper SEA en realidad uno de esos robots bestiajos? (Emphasis added). These examples are rare, and it's clear that they are not always possible, but they exist. I even read online an interesting article by linguists which had a frequency table for subjunctive v indicative after certain expressions, unfortunately I can't seeem to find it now. Moral of the story? No matter what the textbooks say never contradict a native speaker. Much of what we are taught is wrong anyway, like the whole "sequence of tense" thing: no creo que venga (I don't think he's coming/ will come) no creo que haya venido (I don't think he came/has come) no creía que viniera (I didn't think he was coming) no creía que hubiera venido (etc) This is correct as far as it goes! But the problem is that native speakers sometimes say things that do NOT fit this pattern , like: "no creía que venga" (some academic linguists that I have read think that it is because so-called grammarians try to make Spanish fit Latin patterns) Don't get me wrong, for you and I the grammar books are our best bet, I just mean to point out that we have to be very careful before claming that ANYTHING a native speaker says is wrong. Edited by Random review on 07 August 2010 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 45 of 51 08 August 2010 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
True, you didn't. I went astray with that because I thought the article gender change rule might have led you to think that the gender of Spanish nouns can change between singular and plural forms. That distracted me from accurately pointing out the real mistake here, sorry about that.
While it is arguable if the Spanish definite article evolution took this particular turn to avoid cacophony or not, I won't dwell on that ;) It is simply not true that "arte" is always feminine in the plural. Some of the meanings or senses of "arte" (which can be confusingly close) are feminine, and some are masculine, and as such so are their plural forms. Let's compare both arts, Roman and Arabic: comparemos ambos (not "ambas") artes, el románico y el árabe. Lo and behold: a masculine, plural form of "arte". Incidentally, it is exactly the same with one of the examples that you listed as feminine exceptions to the article gender change rule (naturally, most rules have their exceptions): la "haz". "Haz" as in "face" (I prefer "faz" anyway) is feminine, and "haz" as in "beam" is masculine; of course, they become "las haces del hacha" and "los haces luminosos". I guess that's what happens when polysemy meets noun genders; I can see why you regarded this as your 'preferred trick' :)
I'm sure L.Am speakers do actually use "bebé" as feminine. But until the Spanish Academies regard that as proper usage, I'll say it isn't. As for educated native speakers, they do make mistakes (we all do), although it is true that they tend to do so less frequently than non-educated or not very advanced foreign ones. But a mistake made by millions is still a mistake, even if languages is one of the few areas where it can be disguised by the next reform.
I'll try to get hold of it. In my experience Collins publishes amazingly good dictionaries, so the "Rumania" bit kind of surprises me... I hardly ever watch L.Am telly and I never spotted any comments about Romania on it. I have never heard "Rumania" in Spain, so I guess that gives a good measure of the frequency on this side.
I mean that the online DRAE does not include country names. However, if you follow the link, you'll see that Romanians are defined as inhabiting "Rumanía" and not "Rumania". As for L.Am tv programs... I would regard them as realiable a source for good Spanish as younger BBC presenters might be for good English :)
Well, high authorities such as the RAE draw a line between language degradation (read: any deviance from what's regarded as correct in dictionaries) being called a mistake, or embraced by calling it a 'language change'. Since they have no real power to enforce their authority, this line slowly moves over time (that's why I said "kind of normative" and "try to protect"); a change becomes so accepted that it is correct a bit before the Spanish Academies say so. This is how every language works, and I think the lack of such higher authorities (as in the English-speaking countries) just accelerates the process. Of course, a rapidly changing language is obviously less useful than a more static one, and so educated, sensible people refer to dictionaries and correct themselves instead of pushing the language. So we could conclude that language evolves mostly because of ignorant people, or that language evolution is just another name for language degradation.
I surely share your loathing of youngsters degrading languages; esp. on telly. That's just another reason why children should be properly taught grammar and vocabulary at school: it would prevent complete crap of entering languages just because it makes sense to someone. I know that's exactly how every piece of every language ended up where it is in the first place but, as you said, some things just have to be stopped. Anyway, I don't think it's too arrogant to accuse anyone of anything if you can properly back up what you say. No one should take shame in losing against the best. And now for something completely different...
Actually it IS a bit rude, and you overreacted. I was especially hurt about my incredibly bad knowledge of Spanish being exposed in such a shameful, cruel way. Nay, I was kidding :) You're right; perhaps I was too light-hearted when I wrote "try and check" etc. Sorry about that. Then again, please keep in mind that 95% of the time people have absolutely no intention to offend others, so it always helps if we think twice about taking offense. It avoids all kinds of nonsense. That said,
I'm not sure why I could be embarrased about correcting you if it ever turns out you knew what you were talking about all along; in such case I probably wouldn't correct you in the first place ;)
I just love Mortadelo y Filemón :DD Get as many of those as you can, they make the best Spanish learning material EVER.
They sure do, and that guy was right. But they're not so rare. Let me give you a less lavish, prosaic example: "Suponiendo que eso SEA cierto..."
Which, as is, is wrong. Where did you get that?
Well, in my experience, nativeness is wayyyyyy overrated. I could give you a gazillion examples of utter crap written by native speakers of at least three languages. Now imagine you read that crap, and recognize it as such. Then I tell you it was written by native speakers and what, it magically becomes right? I thought so. The only thing you need to correct a native speaker is to know your stuff better than him. Well, in my case, some guts would help you too, but I take pride in having friends (foreign or not) that know my language so well that they can correct me. As I said, no one should take shame in learning from those who know more than he does. Unfortunately not everyone is a sportsman in that regard ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5788 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 46 of 51 08 August 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WHAT real mistake? Arte is feminine in plural and usually masculine in singular just as I said!
Well, it's arguable, I guess (seems unlikely to me though, pending the contribution of a Historical Linguist with a bit of time on his hands), that the avoidance of cacophany may have been a factor IN AN EVOLUTIONARY SENSE, but this is clearly not what most textbooks mean when they talk about this use of el. Personally I know of no reason to suspect its involvement instead of the usual and well studied laws of sound erosion (I'm taking the definition of cacophony to be UNPLEASANT sounds, which is what I understand the word to mean; if you mean difficult to pronounce [which IS apparently a secondary meaning] then we have no disagreement).
Really? My Dictionary has the following entry, which seems pretty clear to me. arte SM o SF (gen m en sing, f en pl) Or Butt and Benjamin (2004) 1.4.16. "Arte 'art' is usually masculine in the singular, but feminine in the plural." None of this has anything to do with nouns like "agua".
Yes, because they are being considered as seperate entities rather than as a true plural, what you are showing here are subtleties in advanced usage (another one is the existence of a small handful of set phrases such as "los artes de pesca = fishing gear"), or the fact (as you noted) that it is feminine in the singular with certain meanings (once again I note that I said USUALLY masculine in the singular). I didn't mention this kind of extremely fine subtlety because I didn't want to spend hours pouring through grammar books (something I have now had to do, though on the plus side I am now aware of a few more set expressons which flaunt gender rules) for a simple forum post, also the thread is aimed at beginners, and finally because I wanted my post to be something slightly shorter than a small novel. An analogous situation would be if somebody (correctly) explained in a post for beginners about adjectives being plural to agree with plural nouns, and then I posted disagreeing and citing examples such as the following (from Assimil 'Using Spanish'), "llega ya Anselmo, el camarero, con el bollito y el cafe con leche habitual," (the context in the chapter [Lesson 8] is that BOTH the coffee and the bun are habitual). My point is that pointing out subtleties of advanced usage does not invalidate the initial explanation (which was just to join in a discussion of weird noun genders). If we start doing that we won't be able to give beginners ANY rules without an intimidatng list of exceptions! At any rate the information I gave was accurate as far as it went.
Right, this *is* interesting (I was unaware of el haz (m) = beam) but just to be clear this doesn't invalidate what I said- as I specifically said, haz (surface) is "la haz" rather than the expected "el haz" if you check my post I did not even mention haz (beam).
As i said I very specifically cited haz (surface), not haz "a secas".
If everyone in the world decides the world is flat then this is a mistake made by millions; if everyone in the world decides you can handle the ball in football (soccer in U.S. and down-under) then football has new rules. Language seems to me clearly much more like the latter. This is clearly a difference of opinion on who "owns" the language, I follow most modern linguists (an example is Steven Pinker in his book "the language instinct" in thinking that if native speakers are saying it, then it is correct *by definition* (for a given register). It follows from this that if I want to learn Spanish as spoken by educated speakers throughout the Hispanic world, and educated native speakers are saying something, then it is correct. I take the democratic view that a language is owned by the people who speak it, rather than some committee of experts. I do applaud their efforts (thanks to them Spanish speakers can read Don Quixote with far less effort than it takes us to read Cervants' contemporary, Shakespeare), and I think them worthwhile; but their efforts would be meaningless without the Spanish-speaking community. My own view is that if this community ignores the advice of the Academy (however excellent) then so does Spanish itself! An example would be the future subjunctive, something so useful it survives in legal language where meanings have to be very precise. The Academy (rightly in my view) tries to resurrect it from time to time, but with no success. most people would agree that (except for legal contracts etc) the future subjunctive is not part of Modern Spanish.
It surprised me too.
Yes to be honest I don't remember ever hearing rumania from a Spaniard, but I didn't want to say so in case it turned out they say it occasionally and I just hadn't noticed. But I have definitely heard rumania on L.Am television.
thanks for clearing that up.
Er, dude, my point about that English construction was that even though it is ugly and I hate it, and wish it would go away, the fact that it is starting to be heard occasionally on BBC radio suggests that it is starting to be accepted. If we come back in 50 years it will probably be correct British English (I really hope I'm wrong!). I try to take what *I* (these things are always a personal judgement-call) consider a common sense view. For instance, the construction, "no sé si + present subjunctive" is simply wrong in Spain, yet is common on Mexican programs. I have (so far!!!!) not heard it on programs from outside Mexico, nor have I ever heard a Columbian say it (yet!) in real life. Until i do I will consider it incorrect. The impression (I have not done the research) I get of the use of la bebé (for girls) is that it seems to me to be quite widespread in L.Am. therefore I personally would use el bebé with Spaniards and the el/la bebé system with L.Americans if the issue ever came up (so far it hasn't, I'm back in the U.K. sadly, so my exposure is TV based now).
Yes, but as I said I don't accept their RIGHT to draw that line (though I may agree with the logic of most of their decisions).You of course do accept it. Both of us I am sure could waste hours of our time arguing our positions, which just backs up what I said- the issue is complex, and actually a bit off topic.
I think it does too, but that doesn't change the fact that English is precisely that language that its native speakers speak, however sad we (me too!) might be about the direction they are taking it.
OK, could be. Equally a simplified language might be easier to learn for foreigners...it's swings and roundabouts as they say in Britain. What worries me more is the loss of elegance and accuracy. When we read older writers we marvel at how simply and elegantly they can put things that now require ugly and cumbersome circumlocutions, and they seemed to do it with a lot less ambiguity to boot. My own take is that the English language is not LOSING this ability, it's just becoming more compartmentalised like all knowledge nowadays. So Doctors can talk with great accuracy about medical matters but sadly precious little else, physicists about Physics, and so on. Meanwhile the man on the street has little knowledge about anything and a rapidly shrinking grammar/vocabulary to fit. Sad, worth fighting, but still exactly what Modern English actually *IS*. And to describe it otherwise to foreign learners seems mistaken to me.
You are right about that. What I SHOULD have said is that there should always be a presumption of great respect for a native speaker's point of view.
Thanks for being a sport about it.
You're doing it again lol!
Well you DID correct me, and I WAS correct (at worst did not mention a few subtleties of advanced usage) about arte being (usually[as I said at the time]) masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, what I mean to say is that I didn't commit the crass beginner's error you thought I did. I think it should be clear by now that I knew what I was talking about.
They are very funny, the frequent word play makes them excellent tools too, I prefer them to Mafalda even though Mafalda is clearly superior in intellectual content.
Yes, well don't rub it in, I am aware of these things nowadays. My point was *precisely* that I was indeed wrong. They ARE quite rare though (if my memory serves that article written by cognitive linguists had them at less than 5% for verbs of thinking and supposition in the affirmative). The subjunctive (of course) has a MEANING, my favourite attempt to define this meaning was in Alonso et al (2005). Under their scheme you can see why your sentence is subjunctive, (specifically the subordinate clause isn't being affirmed, you are merely commenting on what "follows" from it if we suppose it to be true) but also why it is rare (<5%) after affirmative verbs of belief or supposition (by definition they usually imply a subordinate clause that IS being affirmed).
Well my point was that all the books do say it's wrong, but (at least some) native speakers *SAY* things like this. I have spent several hours looking online but can't find it. It was definitely a native speaker though, because that was what surprised me when I saw it a few years ago (possibly L.Am?).
Really? Not in mine.
No, not magically! Rather what native speakers say is (for a given register) the very definition of what's correct! If they were educated speakers then it was correct for the educated register I think sometimes native speakers know something is correct implicitly, so would find it difficult to defend. Having learned the hard way our knowledge is explicit, which gives us an unfair advantage. Well, between us we have managed to turn an interesting thread into the most boring thread ever. Can I summarise? 1)In my Initial Post I stated: arte is feminine in plural, and usually masculine in the single 2) I ommitted certain subtleties regarding the nature of plurals and about a few set phrases because this is a thread on noun genders, intended for beginners trying to learn them, moreover my post was in response to a developing theme about weird genders. Anyone sufficiently interested can now find these above in all their glory. 3) You mistakenly thought I had been decieved by the article into thinking el arte was always masculine, and "corrected" me. 4) We have established that I did NOT make this mistake, and that I said USUALLY masculine in the singular 5) For me what educated native speakers are saying is the very DEFINITION of what is correct; for you the National Academies define what is and isn't correct. For this reason we disagree on the correctness of several expressions Edited by Random review on 08 August 2010 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 47 of 51 08 August 2010 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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OK, this is clearly getting out of hand, so I'll summarize as well, dude :)...
1) Sure, any further discussions on who "owns" a language, speakers vs. Academies, etc. should be moved to a new thread or held privately not to bore bystanders to death, and stay on topic. 2) In my initial post I misinterpreted what the reasons for your mistake were, we agree on that. 3) It still IS a mistake. But don't take my word for it... yet :) Check out this link to the RAE definition of "arte" (http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_HTML=2&TIP O_BUS=3&LEMA=arte). You'll find it listed as being an "ambiguous" (which means it can have either gender) noun, and you'll find 11 more common uses listed as feminine, and 6 as masculine, with their corresponding masculine and feminine plurals. Unless we want to go under some sort of complex calculations, 11 feminine senses out of 17 is not exactly 'unusual' by my definition, and for the plural... well, I'd say 6 out of 17 is a bit more than 'a small handful of set phrases' and that 11 out of 17 hardly qualifies as 'always feminine in the plural'. I'm not saying you don't know your stuff, you back it up with your Butt and Benjamin, and I'm not pulling mine out of my ass either: I back up what I say with this DRAE thing you seem not to like. But since you also said that all the books do say is wrong, let's see what's behind panel #3, or rather, #4. 4) I AM a native Spanish speaker (check my profile), and even if I say so, an educated one, were we to dwell on that. So, by your very definition, what I say is correct. 5) Er... I forgot whatever else I was about to say, so never mind. Have fun :) [edit: rebuild the link] Edited by mrwarper on 08 August 2010 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5788 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 48 of 51 09 August 2010 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The one thing this thread ceased to be several posts ago is fun! on (1): It *is* getting out of hand I agree entirely, I also agree about the new thread (as I think I hinted at myself). on (2) I don't believe that I made a mistake unless ALMOST ANY rule is a mistake, THE RAE entry is ridiculously complete, most BILINGUAL dictionaries I have seen summarise the situation by saying (f) in plural and "usually (m)" in singular. I followed this usage. If you feel the complete list of rules as listed by the RAE would be helpful to advanced learners or intermediates (such as myself) then you posted the link twice above. If you as an educated native speaker STILL insist that it is an error then I will accept your judgement. on (3) I already checked this link out before my last post, it is immensely complete, and does list many meanings as having both genders and also many as (f) and many (all singular) as (m), but even quite complete dictionaries and university level text books summarise this situation the way I did: feminine in plural and usually masculine in singular, because apart from set-phrases like "los artes de pesca" it covers everything in a rule slightly less than several pages long. I don't think this counts as a mistake (but again if you disagree I'll accept that). What has become clear is that arte is even weirder than I thought with regards to gender! on (4) You are clearly well educated, I got that anyway. The fact that you are a native speaker DOES mean something. It means a lot (and if you as a native speake wish to criticise other natives for usage such as la bebé you have a perfect right, of course)!! I don't necessarily agree that the RAE is a good authority to consult, it includes too much that is obscure; but if you as an educated native speaker say that my dictionary is wrong then it is wrong. I don't think (if you disagree I will bow to your judgement!) that the entry in my dictionary (and therefore my initial post, since I copied it) is a mistake but rather a simplification that allows learners to produce accurate sentences without having to understand a whole raft of details. I was already aware of *some* of these details, but now I feel that thanks to this thread and your RAE link I know more about the gender of this damn noun than the average B.A. in Spanish does! I was amazed to hear that you are a native speaker of Spanish, simply because of the very high standard of your English! I must congratulate you on that! From your use of English I just assumed that it was your native tongue. You should take it as a compliment. I don't know about your spoken English, but your written English is definitely not B2! It has to be at least C1 (I know lots of NATIVES who wouldn't know what words like cacophony and polysemy mean!).I thought you were a native, and a well educated one at that, to the point that in my above posts I have been striving a lot more than usual to express myself correctly in case you started criticising my English as well! I'm genuinely very impressed. My own Spanish, by the way, I estimate at B1, but I haven't sat the test yet. Anyway, like I say, if we are going to go into THIS level of subtlety I now don't feel safe to post ANY rules helping beginners, because they are ALL oversimplifications at this level, and I fear more scenarios like this thread (see below for a scenario off the top of my head!) Forum Question from beginner: Why do I see things like "soy cocinero", shouldn't that be soy UN cocinero? Me: No, it shouldn't. You don't use the indefinite article with professions and the like unless they are qualified. Soy cocinero, but soy un cocinero de p.m. mrwarner: oh yeah? What about when you identify someone by their profession? Such as the following exchange: "¿quién es Iker Casillas? - Es un futbolista" me: OK, but my rule was correct as far as it went, it's in all the textbooks. What you are talking about is a subtlety of advanced usage. mrwarner: it may be in all the textbooks, but it's still wronge, see http://www.rae/maticesmaticesymásmatices.es me: I think I'm gonna stop helping people now That said, a lot of things that came over as very patronising at the time (like giving me advice on which comics to buy, or saying that YOU prefer faz instead of haz) are not AT ALL patronising now that I know you are a native speaker (your knowledge of the language and the culture are obviously going to be way above my own), had I checked your profile (I suppose I should have) I would not have found your posts offensive, as I unfortunately did, and so not reacted so defensively. So at least we have that cleared up. Changing the subject slightly, an educated native speaker such as yourself who can also explain things in a very high level of English is a precious resource indeed (especially for me now that I'm back in the UK), may I please PM you with some (actually many) doubts and difficulties with Spanish that you could easily clear up for me (given the way we have started off I will of course understand If you decline!)? Edited by Random review on 09 August 2010 at 5:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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