5 ms·

Surprised the article didn't mention the Spanish definite article lo, which can be paired with a masculine adjective to form a nominal phrase meaning the abstra

by jgwil2 6y ago

Surprised the article didn't mention the Spanish definite article lo, which can be paired with a masculine adjective to form a nominal phrase meaning the abstract notion of the adjective: lo mismo - the same [thing], lo bueno - the good, that which is good. My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well. Edit: why on earth is this being downvoted? Seriously confused - is something here wrong or controversial?

OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
I can't down-vote, so I don't know. But what's the significance of that example? It's one instance of many remnants of the Latin neuter in modern languages.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  Yeah okay, so I guess it's of zero interest to anybody who clicked on an article about the Latin neuter. Thanks for the feedback.
  - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
    No, my feedback is that it's not clear what you meant. I guess I wasn't very clear either.
    - jgwil2 6y ago
      Sorry for the sarcasm. I just meant it as one additional data point on the subject of the article. Not to get too off topic, but I got snippy because I just don't understand what standards comments are sometimes held to. Mine may not have been the most interesting comment in the world, but when I go to the trouble of making what I think is a reasonable contribution to the discussion, and then some people decide it's so bad I should do karmic penance, it hurts my feelings. I apologize once again for taking it out on you.
      - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
        It's karmic roulette - The rules are made up, and the points don't matter :-)
      - jrumbut 6y ago
        I've learned that there's an element of randomness and momentum, and sometimes you just get a raw deal. What still kills me is when some post gets downvoted and someone replies "you're getting downvoted but actually that's a good post!" and they get upvoted. It's not as though you can trade the upvotes for prizes anyway.
  - canadianfella 6y ago
    This one deserves the downvotes.
axtscz 6y ago
Yeah no idea why you're getting down voted. Lo is gender neutral, and can be used with nouns of either gender. However it is primarily used in conjunction with adjectives, not so much nouns.
patcon 6y ago
I suspect it's because it struck some as the "but what about" that is a trope here. The "i can't believe they didn't mention this thing I know" sorta shtick that us tech ppl love to do :)
- jgwil2 6y ago
  Interesting. I didn't mean it as a gotcha, just another example of the phenomenon under discussion. Maybe the "surprised the article didn't mention" formulation is not the way to go.
  - patcon 6y ago
    Oh totally, i didn't read it as that either, but when i went looking (bc you mentioned), i immediately noticed it :) I agree that avoiding "i am surprised" generally works well for me, as i find ppl can be prickly toward a subtle one-ups-manship vibe. Personally, I often try to find an and-yes angle before adding something I know (esp negating), and it seems like it works alright :) Anyhow, I appreciate how humble and thoughtful you seem, in making sense of this wierd "up/down vote" system we're compelled to sift meaning from in digital spaces heh
naringas 6y ago
while the article is factually incorrect when claiming that Spanish has no neutral gender at all. It's also true that "lo" is seldom used in Spanish and there are almost no neutral nouns (like in german).
- leephillips 6y ago
  No, it is correct that there are no neuter nouns in Spanish. That’s all it says. And you are very incorrect about “lo”. You can’t read a page of Spanish without encountering it several times.
  - naringas 6y ago
    but the vast majority of those "lo" would be the male article not the neuter.
- stevula 6y ago
  I think the author would make the same argument that they did in reference to Romanian neuter: > The issue is that these nouns do not behave like a fully-fledged gender. Importantly, there are no dedicated neuter endings for adjectives; instead, when a Romanian ‘neuter’ noun combines with an adjective, that adjective will be either masculine or feminine. That is, “lo” is a remnant of the neuter but because it is accompanied by a masculine adjective (there is no such thing as a neuter adjective), it does not constitute a true gender.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ilammy 6y ago
You can see the same thing in Russian and other slavic languages, for example, where you can use "-о" to convert an adjective into concept noun (of always neuter gender). For example, "добрый" (masculine adjective "good)" => "добро" (neuter noun "the good").
- TylerE 6y ago
  What would those sound like phonetically for those of us that can't read cryllic?
  - kleton 6y ago
    Like Greek alphabet from math class except for the ы closest to a short i. dobry, dobro
  - Zanni 6y ago
    You can copy and paste unfamiliar words (or words in unfamiliar languages) into Google Translate and hit the speaker button to get a pronunciation.
  - glogla 6y ago
    In English something like DO-BREE and DO-BROH (the latter ending with "o" in "rocket")
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well. Does it? Spanish articles derive from Latin ille / illa / illud ["that", as contrasted with "this"]. The neuter (nominative) form is illud. It is not obvious how this would have resulted in the form lo. Wiktionary suggests ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish ) that it derives from the masculine form illum, which makes much more phonological sense. (-m was already so weak in Latin that a syllable ending in -m completely disappeared when followed by a vowel.)
- stevula 6y ago
  The etymology you linked actually says something different: > From a Vulgar Latin *lo, *illu. Masculine pronoun from Latin illum, singular masculine accusative of ille. Neuter article and pronoun form from Latin illud, neuter of ille. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish That means some uses of "lo" are derived from masculine ille while others are indeed from neuter illud. To answer your phonological uncertainty, the entry shows derivation from illud > *illu > lo.
Sniffnoy 6y ago
I didn't downvote, but if it's being downvoted, it's probably because the article does mention "lo", although only in the context of Asturian, not standard Spanish. > Distinct but unofficial Romance languages like [...] Asturian (spoken in Asturias, a part of Spain) seem to have definite articles (equivalent to English the) for three genders, not two. Asturian has el for masculine nouns, la for feminine and lo for those nouns termed ‘neuter’. [...] The key question is whether these supposed neuter definite articles demonstrate the existence of a neuter gender. Again, sadly, the answer is no. These definite articles and the nouns they are used with (no matter what their origins) seem not to constitute a neuter gender, but rather to signify that the noun is something abstract or a physical mass – that is, an indivisible substance, like water or gold. [...] Why does this contradict the existence of a neuter gender? Because we find this “mass gender” (Harmon 2007) used with nouns that were not neuter in Latin, and because nouns in these languages can appear both with and without the feature, according to whether they have a mass meaning or not. This is therefore not a grammatical feature on the same level as the masculine and feminine genders; instead, the mass gender is a feature of nouns determined by semantics – to what sort of thing the noun refers. If you wanted to talk about "lo" in standard Spanish, it would make more sense to start from the starting point of what's discussed in the article -- e.g., "The 'lo' construction actually exists in standard Spanish as well, although it's more restricted than in Asturian; rather than being used with any mass noun, it's used to mean..."
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
I was wondering the same thing. I've been told that in Spanish, you use the neuter when you don't know what the correct gender for something should be. As in: "Te deseo lo mejor" "I want the best for you" In that phrase, the speaker doesn't know what gender "the best" is, so neuter is used.

by jgwil2 6y ago

OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago

I can't down-vote, so I don't know. But what's the significance of that example? It's one instance of many remnants of the Latin neuter in modern languages.

jgwil2 6y ago
Yeah okay, so I guess it's of zero interest to anybody who clicked on an article about the Latin neuter. Thanks for the feedback.
- OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
  No, my feedback is that it's not clear what you meant. I guess I wasn't very clear either.
  - jgwil2 6y ago
    Sorry for the sarcasm. I just meant it as one additional data point on the subject of the article. Not to get too off topic, but I got snippy because I just don't understand what standards comments are sometimes held to. Mine may not have been the most interesting comment in the world, but when I go to the trouble of making what I think is a reasonable contribution to the discussion, and then some people decide it's so bad I should do karmic penance, it hurts my feelings. I apologize once again for taking it out on you.
    - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
      It's karmic roulette - The rules are made up, and the points don't matter :-)
    - jrumbut 6y ago
      I've learned that there's an element of randomness and momentum, and sometimes you just get a raw deal. What still kills me is when some post gets downvoted and someone replies "you're getting downvoted but actually that's a good post!" and they get upvoted. It's not as though you can trade the upvotes for prizes anyway.
- canadianfella 6y ago
  This one deserves the downvotes.

axtscz 6y ago

Yeah no idea why you're getting down voted. Lo is gender neutral, and can be used with nouns of either gender. However it is primarily used in conjunction with adjectives, not so much nouns.

patcon 6y ago

I suspect it's because it struck some as the "but what about" that is a trope here. The "i can't believe they didn't mention this thing I know" sorta shtick that us tech ppl love to do :)

jgwil2 6y ago
Interesting. I didn't mean it as a gotcha, just another example of the phenomenon under discussion. Maybe the "surprised the article didn't mention" formulation is not the way to go.
- patcon 6y ago
  Oh totally, i didn't read it as that either, but when i went looking (bc you mentioned), i immediately noticed it :) I agree that avoiding "i am surprised" generally works well for me, as i find ppl can be prickly toward a subtle one-ups-manship vibe. Personally, I often try to find an and-yes angle before adding something I know (esp negating), and it seems like it works alright :) Anyhow, I appreciate how humble and thoughtful you seem, in making sense of this wierd "up/down vote" system we're compelled to sift meaning from in digital spaces heh

naringas 6y ago

while the article is factually incorrect when claiming that Spanish has no neutral gender at all. It's also true that "lo" is seldom used in Spanish and there are almost no neutral nouns (like in german).

leephillips 6y ago
No, it is correct that there are no neuter nouns in Spanish. That’s all it says. And you are very incorrect about “lo”. You can’t read a page of Spanish without encountering it several times.
- naringas 6y ago
  but the vast majority of those "lo" would be the male article not the neuter.
stevula 6y ago
I think the author would make the same argument that they did in reference to Romanian neuter: > The issue is that these nouns do not behave like a fully-fledged gender. Importantly, there are no dedicated neuter endings for adjectives; instead, when a Romanian ‘neuter’ noun combines with an adjective, that adjective will be either masculine or feminine. That is, “lo” is a remnant of the neuter but because it is accompanied by a masculine adjective (there is no such thing as a neuter adjective), it does not constitute a true gender.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ilammy 6y ago

You can see the same thing in Russian and other slavic languages, for example, where you can use "-о" to convert an adjective into concept noun (of always neuter gender). For example, "добрый" (masculine adjective "good)" => "добро" (neuter noun "the good").

TylerE 6y ago
What would those sound like phonetically for those of us that can't read cryllic?
- kleton 6y ago
  Like Greek alphabet from math class except for the ы closest to a short i. dobry, dobro
- Zanni 6y ago
  You can copy and paste unfamiliar words (or words in unfamiliar languages) into Google Translate and hit the speaker button to get a pronunciation.
- glogla 6y ago
  In English something like DO-BREE and DO-BROH (the latter ending with "o" in "rocket")

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well. Does it? Spanish articles derive from Latin ille / illa / illud ["that", as contrasted with "this"]. The neuter (nominative) form is illud. It is not obvious how this would have resulted in the form lo. Wiktionary suggests ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish ) that it derives from the masculine form illum, which makes much more phonological sense. (-m was already so weak in Latin that a syllable ending in -m completely disappeared when followed by a vowel.)

stevula 6y ago
The etymology you linked actually says something different: > From a Vulgar Latin *lo, *illu. Masculine pronoun from Latin illum, singular masculine accusative of ille. Neuter article and pronoun form from Latin illud, neuter of ille. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo#Spanish That means some uses of "lo" are derived from masculine ille while others are indeed from neuter illud. To answer your phonological uncertainty, the entry shows derivation from illud > *illu > lo.

Sniffnoy 6y ago

I didn't downvote, but if it's being downvoted, it's probably because the article does mention "lo", although only in the context of Asturian, not standard Spanish. > Distinct but unofficial Romance languages like [...] Asturian (spoken in Asturias, a part of Spain) seem to have definite articles (equivalent to English the) for three genders, not two. Asturian has el for masculine nouns, la for feminine and lo for those nouns termed ‘neuter’. [...] The key question is whether these supposed neuter definite articles demonstrate the existence of a neuter gender. Again, sadly, the answer is no. These definite articles and the nouns they are used with (no matter what their origins) seem not to constitute a neuter gender, but rather to signify that the noun is something abstract or a physical mass – that is, an indivisible substance, like water or gold. [...] Why does this contradict the existence of a neuter gender? Because we find this “mass gender” (Harmon 2007) used with nouns that were not neuter in Latin, and because nouns in these languages can appear both with and without the feature, according to whether they have a mass meaning or not. This is therefore not a grammatical feature on the same level as the masculine and feminine genders; instead, the mass gender is a feature of nouns determined by semantics – to what sort of thing the noun refers. If you wanted to talk about "lo" in standard Spanish, it would make more sense to start from the starting point of what's discussed in the article -- e.g., "The 'lo' construction actually exists in standard Spanish as well, although it's more restricted than in Asturian; rather than being used with any mass noun, it's used to mean..."

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

I was wondering the same thing. I've been told that in Spanish, you use the neuter when you don't know what the correct gender for something should be. As in: "Te deseo lo mejor" "I want the best for you" In that phrase, the speaker doesn't know what gender "the best" is, so neuter is used.