noun gender – Spanish Linguist (2024)

I love Trader Joe’s. We live about midway between two of theirstores, so I end up shoppingthere two or three times a week. My husband would probably starve to death if I didn’t keep our freezer stocked with Chicken Tikka Masala, Mac ‘n Cheese, and the like for hislunches. And their goat milk brie reminds me of the excellentcabra cheese I enjoyed in Spain last summer, with a firm crust and a soft center.

But ever since TJ’sintroduced their Chicken Asada, my happy shopping mood is punctured every timeI cruisethe refrigerator case. The problem is thatchicken (pollo)is masculine in Spanish, soAsada should really be beAsado. The abominably feminineAsadais no doubt a carry-over from the more famousCarne Asada, which Trader Joe’s also sells. However, TJ’s gets chicken gender right in their Pollo Asado (this is just chicken, no vegetables or sauce), andPollo Asadopizza.

If you care about Spanish grammar, please contact Trader Joe’s to complain — maybe they’ll fix the product name if they hear from enough hispanophiles! Here is some suggested wording.

Please change thename of your Chicken Asada product to Chicken Asado, to match the (correct) gender you use for your ‘Pollo Asado’. Chicken (‘pollo’) is masculine in Spanish, so ‘asada’ is just plain wrong. ‘Asada’ is correct in ‘Carne Asada’,but that’s because meat (‘carne’) is feminine.

[See follow-up post here.]

With civilization under attack from both terrorists and demagogues, the idea of a blog post nit-picking President Obama’s Spanish definitely feels — trivial. However, we all do what we can. I have no idea how to bring about world peace. But I hope that by sharingsome usefulinsights into the world’s second-most-spoken language, I might, in my own way, bringthe world a little closer together.

Terry Byrne of USA Today pointed out to me that Obama mistakenly saidEs un nueva día ‘It’s a new day’in his introductory remarks at his joint press conference with Raul Castro. This occurs toward the end of the clip below. Because día is masculine, the correct Spanish would have beenun nuevo día. I also noticed that Obama began his remarks by wishing the audienceBuenos tardes ‘Good afternoon’ instead ofBuenas tardes, with the-as ending onbuenas matching the feminine gender oftardes.

Noun gender — the difference between masculine and feminine nouns — poses a steep challenge to English speakers.The fact that Obama made these mistakes even though the correct Spanish was surely written in his notes reflects this difficulty.Beginners tend to ignore gendercompletely, especially when adjectives are separated from their controlling nouns (e.g.La casa es bonita).Even advanced non-native speakers make mistakes. I know that I still do, from time to time.

While Obama’s two mistakes —buenos forbuenasandnuevafornuevo— both involved gender, theyhad differenttriggers.The first mistake wasmost likelya carry-over from the more common expressionBuenos días. The fact thattarde ends in an-e, so that its gender is not obvious, may have played a contributing role. The second mistake was undoubtedly driven by the fact thatdíaappears to befeminine because itendsin-a. In an earlier postI explained the historical roots of this irregularity.Essentially,dies, the Latin source ofdía, was the lone masculine among a set of Latin words (the “fifth declension”) that all came to have-a endings in Spanish. Others includemateria/madera(both from Latin materies),especia (fromspecies),andrabia (fromrabies).

It’s particularly interesting that Obama correctly said un (masculine) and then changed the next word, nuevo, tonueva (feminine). I can think of two reasons why this happened. The first is thatun isn’t as obviously masculine as nuevo because the final -o ofuno is dropped inthis context.The secondis thatnuevo immediately precedesdía, so that the-a ending of díamight haveexerted a stronger pull.

Changing gears from linguistics to literature: inthespeech that Obama gave in Cuba the next day, hequoted the Cuban poetJosé Martí’s“Cultivo una rosa blanca”, whichalludestothe possibility ofpeace between long-time enemies.You can hear this reference at 1:30 in the clip below. I got a big kick out of this quote becauseI had just assigned the poemin my intermediate Spanish class. I can’t think of abetter, and more timely,demonstration ofthe importance of literature!

[Today isSpanish Fridayso this post is in Spanish. ¡Scroll down for English translation!]

Actualmente estoy investigando los múltiples orígenes de las palabras españolas que son masculinas aunque terminan con-a. En el proceso descubrí el sitio web BlogoLenga. Tiene el sumario más útil sobre este tema que he encontrado, incluso el de la nueva Gramática de la Real Academia. Es una lástima que su autor no diga nada de su identidad.

No dudo que mis lectores encontrarán algo de interés en elblog. ¡Que disfruten!

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Right now I’m looking into the many origins of Spanish nouns that are masculine even though they end in-a. In the process I came across the websiteBlogoLenga, which has the best summary I’ve seen of this topic, including the one in the Real Academia’s newGramática. It’s a pity that the blog’s author has little to say about his (or her) identity.

I’m sure that my Spanish-speaking readers will find something of interest in the blog. Enjoy!

In an earlier postI wrote about two of my favorite Spanish words:esdrújulo andazulejo. I loveesdrújulo because it reminds me of my academic research on Spanish stress and because of its role in an amusing family anecdote. I loveazulejo because it starred in one of my happiest Spanish memories, when my high schoolSpanish came flooding back to me in Madrid after a few years off to learn French.

I also have a least favorite Spanish word:víctima, which means victim. My problem with the word is that it’s always feminine. A woman isuna víctima and a man isuna víctima, too. This really bothers me as a woman. Why should all victims be feminine?

As a linguist, I have more perspective. Víctima is feminine by historical accident, not by misogynist design: it comes from the feminineLatin nounvictima, meaninga person or animal killed as a sacrifice. Nor is it the only Spanish noun whose gender is unaffected by that of the person it refers to. Bebé,ángel, andpersonajeare always masculine, and the wordpersonaitself is always feminine. (So is gente, though it doesn’t refer to an individual person.)This is a small group of words, but all well-established in the language.

Moreover, I know that there’s nothing intrinsic about noun gender, once we get beyond words likemadre andpadre. There’s nothing masculine about alibro andestante (book and bookshelf), or feminine about amesa and silla (table and chair). For that matter, Spanish words referring to many aspects of the female experience are masculine, includingembarazo and parto (pregnancy and childbirth),útero(obvious), andpecho(breast). This is the kind of mismatch that inspires beginning Spanish students to change el vestido “the dress” tola vestida, always a chuckle-worthy mistake. I’m sure we could come up with a similar list of feminine vocabulary related to the male experience.

Nevertheless, it is overwhelmingly the case, with the few exceptions mentioned above, that Spanish words for people “swing” either masculine or feminine, depending on whom they refer to. These include several other nouns that, like víctima, end in-a, likedentista,turista, andatleta.ThusRafael Nadal es un atleta espléndido(masc.) and ArantxaArantxa Sánchez Vicari isuna atleta espléndida (fem.) “People” nouns ending in -eswing as well: thusel orlaagente, estudiante, cantante, and so on Most nouns that apply to people, of course, have distinct masculine and feminine forms, likeprofesor andprofesora ormédico andmédica.

Even acriminal can be unoruna!!!

According to the Collins dictionary, though not the Real Academia, there’s been some progress toward gender flexibility in the baby department. Collins definesbebéas either masculine and feminine, and reports a specifically feminine variantbeba (no accent) in Argentina. With this example as an inspiration, and in the spirit of feminist linguistic revolt, I hereby resolve to useun víctima in my own Spanish when referring to a male victim. Won’t you join me?