Tuesday 25 October 2011

The gender-bending eagle

According to one of my recent postings, nouns ending in 'A', apart from some exceptions, are feminine and, if you look up águila (eagle), in a Spanish-English dictionary, it will probably say 'NF' (noun, feminine)

So why, if you type 'eagle' into the dictionary at www.spanishdict.com , does it come back with 'EL águila'?
Stranger still, type in 'the eagles', and you will get 'LAS águilas'
Finally, just to completely confuse you, try 'the bald eagle' and you will get 'EL águila calvA' not 'calvO'

It all revolves around the fact that Spanish speakers don't like 'cacofonía', things which sound bad. So, while 'águila' IS indeed feminine, as is seen in the plural, and the agreement of adjectives, 'LA águila' sounds awful, and is awkward to say, so they just changed it!

That's not the only example, it also applies to 'EL hacha', a hatchet, or axe.

The same dislike of awkward sound combinations probably explains why the pronoun 'le' is changed to 'se' when it sits alongside the pronoun 'lo'
So,
I gave him a book = 'le dí un libro'
I brought it for him = 'lo traje para él'
BUT
I gave it to him = 'se lo dí' and NOT 'le lo dí'

But that's why we learn Spanish, rather than, say, German. It just SOUNDS better!

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