Let's see if I can provoke any of my spanish friends here...
The news about the baby born of Mr. Felipe and Mrs. Leticia came also here. I can see spanish people placing bets on the baby being male or female...
of course spanish and italian cultures are so similar: in the italian language, when you are speaking of a group of feminine subjects doing something you refer them to the feminine adjective ("quelle ragazze sono BELLE"), but as long as there is only one man in that group, you refer everybody to the masculine adjective ("Quei ragazzi sono BELLI"). Of course you still use masculine if there's one female among many men (come on, OF COURSE)
this is to say that the spanish girl is going to become a princess (oh dear) IF AND ONLY IF there will not be any other male among the descendants of Felipe&Leticia... hold your breathe anyone...
maschilism rulez!!
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3 comments:
full stop Andrea!
Our great president promised that he will change the law to allow royal women to be queen with the same rights than men.
ZP (a.k.a Bambi) can not solve the high price of houses problem, can not afford with inmigration, our regions are defining theirselves as nations, the mean time of a job position in spain can be measured in seconds, but he will solve this problem. The new let-us-go-and-live-sailing royal member will be able to be queen with the same rights than men.
I am wondering... if now gay people can marry in Spain, will a royal gay be able to be queen if he is a man, or king if he is a woman? After all it is a matter of equality in rights. Men and women have the same rights. I am sure this problem will be on the top of the to do problems list of our president.
A main confusion is that gender (género) is the same than sex (sexo) in Spanish. Although many ppl (I would bet that a vast majority of Spanish ppl among them) don't know it, we have got six different genders: masculino, femenino, neutro, epiceno, común y ambiguo.
The gender común is for those words which are design both men and women: idiota, periodista, asistente...
Epiceno is used for animals for which we don't differentiate between male and female: serpiente, elefante...
Ambiguo is for those words that are at the same tame male/female: el mar, la mar...
In a situation where there are many girls and a boy, you use the neuter gender, not the male one even if the ending is the one used for males. It's like saying 'idiota' is female, it isn't; it's común even if the ending sounds like the one used for female gender.
urgh!
thanks for the clarification, anonymous! I meant to say that the masculine/feminine distinction is present in italian, where we don't have neutro or ambiguo (hey that's a name, man!). But of course idiota is applicable to men and women (mostly to men, in my humble view...) also in italian...
this doesn't dolve the problem though, which i think is the REAL rule about female descendent of the spanish crown...
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