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Old May 21, 2009, 08:45 AM
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irmamar irmamar is offline
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Interesting question. In Spanish gender is often confused with sex, but this is a great mistake. Words have gender, neither humans nor animals have it, but sex. There've been several studies about Spanish words gender; most of Spanish words derive from Latin, of course, and have taken their gender from this language. However, there are other words which have changed their original Latin gender into another, masculine or feminine, depending on several causes. A lot of Spanish feminine words ending in -a come from a neutral plural Latin word ending in -a (arma, leña). Other Spanish words ending in -a (el día, el poema) have maintained their masculine gender although they end in -a.

When we personify an inanimate object, usually we give it the sex that is related to the gender it has. I could call my car with a name such as "Manolito". A ship would have a male personification. However, a lot of ships have female names (Aurora, Carmen, Sirena, ...). Even people who live besides the sea usually don't say "el mar", but "la mar".
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