Re: Romance WE

In a message dated 1/1/2004 1:26:00 PM Eastern Standard Time,
carrajena@YAHOO.COM writes:

>I've decided I'm not completely satisfied with the C-a
>words for we.  Currently they are
>nos (m.)
>nosa (f.)
>I've been looking at my dictionaries and not that many
>of them don't list feminine forms for this word.  Is
>this an omission (because of regular derivation) or is
>Spanish just odd?
I have always assumed Spanish was just odd: Latin did not make a gender
distinction for "we," and (I remember from school) French does not.  A quick check
of a handy book* indicates that Rumanian, Portuguese and Catalan do not either.

I seem to recall that the Spanish Nosotros/as is historically a compound of
"nos" + another word ("others"?).  The other word was gender marked, and in
other Romance languages that did not form this compound, there was no reason for
"we" to acquire gender-specific forms.

*The Romance Languages by Harris & Vincent.

Doug

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