> En réponse à Clint Jackson Baker
> <litrex1@...>:
>
> > But Spanish is definitely worse: el problema, el
> agua,
> > el drama....
> >
>
> Absolutely not! It's on the contrary very
> systematic. You just have to have a
> bit of knowledge of etymology. And that only for the
> first and the third, since
> the second is something completely different.
>
> As for "problema" and "drama", the explanation is
> simple: those two words are
> of Greek origin, and were masculine in Greek. Thus
> they are masculine in
> Spanish. other examples are "el poeta", "el poema",
> etc... Except
> for "problema", all the others are restricted to the
> vocabulary of art, and a
> schooled English-speaking person can recognise their
> Greek origin. So they are
> no problem. Note that the problem is identical in
> French, where those words end
> by -e ("problème", "drame", "poète", "poème") and
> still are masculine ("le
> problème"). So if you don't have a problem in
> French, you can't have it in
> Spanish :)) .
>
> As for "agua", the problem is different, since it's
> definitely a feminine word.
> What happens then? Well, that's called liaison, and
> every one who knows French
> knows about that. In French, when the article is put
> in front of a word
> beginning with a vowel, it's elided as l', whatever
> the gender. In Spanish the
> thing is a little more restricted. When the feminine
> article (the masculine is
> el, so cannot be elided) preceeds a word beginning
> with the vowel a- (or ha-,
> since h is silent in Spanish) and this vowel is
> *stressed*, it is elided too
> ("la agua" is quite ackward to pronounce). but since
> Spanish people love to add
> little e- in front of their words (the station, la
> estación for instance :)) ),
> the elided la becomes el, which happens to be
> identical to the masculine
> article, but in fact has the same origin as la (both
> come from illa, but one
> had the beginning elided, while the other had the
> end elided, through the
> influence of the following stressed a). Apart from
> that, the word stays
> feminine (in plural, you have "las aguas", not *"los
> aguas").
>
> So you see, what you call "definitely worse" is in
> fact identical to what
> happens in French, except that it's easier :)) .
>
> Christophe.
>
>
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else
> play the leading role.