By Apio Frito
Anyone who’s studied Spanish for about a month or two is likely to be nearly ecstatic about how reasonable and friendly gender in Spanish is (given exposure to other languages that have it: I’m looking at you, German!). Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous? Masculine if it ends with an ‘o’, feminine if it ends with an ‘a’. Plomo, cuchillo, orgullo, pistola, botella, destreza1. Love-ly!
Anyone who’s studied the language for at least a little bit longer has more grey hair and wrinkles at the corners of their mouths from all the frowning, because Spanish gender is about as sneaky and unexpected as ninjas plotting heists with weasels in a house full of jumpscares.
All these other folks have one thing in common: they all have a problema. Masculine! Say ‘una problema’ and lose your chance to be teacher’s pet forever! And then Problema brings his no-good thug pals Tema, Sistema, Idioma, Fonema, Poema, Enigma2: just as you lose count of these, their rowdy neighbours Mapa and Planeta show up, too. You shouldn’t vandalise the Spanish language alone!
So, where does this nonsense come from? From a country that, surprisingly, created more reasonable things, too: Ancient Greece. All these difficult (say, problema-tic, eh?) words were regular in Ancient Greek. Regular and neuter. And that’s how they came to Latin, which had the neuter gender along with the masculine and the feminine, so no conflicts there. The trouble started when these words went to Romance languages, most of which lost their neuter gender. They had to be put in one of the remaining boxes, and they became masculine, due to similarities in the case forms—so many original Latin neuter nouns in addition to the Greek guys—resulting in oro, hierro, escudo3 (from aurum, ferrum, scutum).
Well, problem solved, isn’t it? Heh, no. Look at ‘coma’: if it refers to a state of unconsciousness, it’s masculine (used to be a Greek neuter noun); if it the Spanish version of ‘comma’, it’s feminine (used to be a different Greek neuter noun!). And now, make way for Rima, Gama, Cima and Goma4, the nasty girlfriends of our Greek troublemakers (all used to be neuter and masculine in Ancient Greek, so go figure)!
Enough yet? No? Let’s crank it up to eleven bazillion, with all the perfectly Latin and feminine words, like llama, cama, fama, calma, plata, rata, capa, copa5, aaarrgh! Okay, it’s time to take a breather now, gender is tricky, even in languages, and there’s certainly more than meets the eye.
1 – Lead, knife, pride, pistol, bottle, dexterity.
2 – Theme, system, language, phoneme, poem, enigma
3 – Gold, iron, shield
4 – Rhyme, scale (musical), peak, rubber
5 – Flame, bed, fame, peace, silver, rat, cape, cup
Get more interesting language and linguistics content in our magazine. Click here to subscribe https://sillyli.ng/6X3hyA or you can subscribe below
