• zephorah@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    La Casa vs El hospital. What determines the gender of each? Spelling is great, but this piece boggles the mind.

    • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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      9 days ago

      In Spanish, most masculine words are “LONERS”, and end with one of those letters.

    • Onionguy@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      Suffix -a mostly female, Suffix -al mostly male. There are exceptions but it’s a good rule of thumb.

      • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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        8 days ago

        And then you get - el agua

        Feminine. With feminine adjectives. El agua clara. But you have to use “El”.

        Spanish is still way more consistent than English tho

        • Onionguy@lemm.ee
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          8 days ago

          Yeah like I said mostly haha. ^^ Same with el problema, etc. There’s probably a nice ethymological explanation to memorize them better but in the end you have to deal with irregularities in any language except maybe Esperanto or some other artificial ones.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 days ago

      I’m sure there’s etymological reasons, but in practice ‘la hospital’ being less pleasant to say (with two vowel sounds directly next to each other) probably contributed. Like how it’s el agua, even though any adjectives for it are feminine: el agua contaminada.