(un) semen?

[ElDanés]

I was reading El Mundo when I came across a headline, which I thought was a bit funny, grammatically. It goes like this:

Más de la mitad de los jóvenes españoles tiene un semen de mala calidad.

And again, in the context:

El 57,8% de los jóvenes españoles presenta un semen de calidad inferior [...]

Is it common to refer to semen in this way in Spanish? It's the first time I have seen semen being referred to in this way, like there's only "one" of it. I would say simply just, semen, or at least, alguno semen. And also, are there other common constructions like this, where a thing is just referred to as "one" of it, or alike.

[CrOtALiTo]

One semen, I don't like as named to that in the life, Semen, good I believe that all places in, it's named of the same way (semen), please you that are another country different to mine, tell me if you have another way to say semen.

[ElDanés]

I'm not talking about the word, semen, itself, but rather why it is referred to as singular: un semen. I have never seen it being referred to like that before. As an example: In English you wouldn't say: More than half of the Spanish youth have one semen of bad quality; but: More than half of the Spanish youth have one semen of bad quality.

tell me if you have another way to say semen.

Well, semen is not used in most languages. To mention a few other ways to say it: sæd in Danish and Norwegian, säd in Swedish, siemmeneste in Finnish and jīngyé (精液) in Chinese. It's true though, that many languages have a word close to semen, probably because they all derive from the Latin word, sēmen, which means seed, or also, back then, semen: like Seman in German, sêmen in Portuguese, semya (семя) in Russian, and semeno in Czech.

It's all about what language family the language comes from. Here I mostly used the Indo-european family, except for Chinese (which I included, to show a completely other word) and Finnish.

[ruby]

Hi El Danés

Could it be that the word semen is a collective noun that is singular in form but refers to a group of sperm ? Collective nouns are often uncountable. ?? Just a thought

Ruby

[ElDanés]

Oh, yeah, that could be the case. But still, normally you wouldn't use an indefinite article, when you are working with collective nouns? Like, you don't say, I have one news for, or, one news of bad quality.

[ruby]

I suppose you could use the definate article 'the' as non countable nouns do not take a/an before them either.

[CrOtALiTo]

Ohhh, Danes, you are very but very informed in the thread, BUT GUY, I did't understand the words or text wrote in Chinise.

Ajajaja, please you only speaking me in English or Spanish.

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by CrOtALiTo

Ohhh, Danes, you are very but very informed in the thread, BUT GUY, I did't understand the words or text wrote in Chinise.

Ajajaja, please you only speaking me in English or Spanish.

Sólo mencionó la palabra en chino para semen, así que sí lo podemos entender.

[CrOtALiTo]

Yeah, I know.

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by ElDanés

I was reading El Mundo when I came across a headline, which I thought was a bit funny, grammatically. It goes like this:

Más de la mitad de los jóvenes españoles tiene un semen de mala calidad.

And again, in the context:

El 57,8% de los jóvenes españoles presenta un semen de calidad inferior [...]

Is it common to refer to semen in this way in Spanish? It's the first time I have seen semen being referred to in this way, like there's only "one" of it. I would say simply just, semen, or at least, alguno semen. And also, are there other common constructions like this, where a thing is just referred to as "one" of it, or alike.

Unlike English, in Spanish you need to use the article when generalizing about a noun. For example:

(The) Nuns are not supposed to get married. = Las monjas no se deben casar.
(The) Carrots are good for your eyesight. = Las zanahorias te ayudan con la vista.
(The) Cars usually have four wheels. = Por lo general, los coches tienen cuatro ruedas.

The examples above use the definite article; the same is true for the indefinite article.

El joven tiene una fuerza tremenda. = The young man has (an) incredibe strength. (If you use 'an' here, the sentence no longer means what the Spanish version means.)
El estudiante de hoy tiene un nivel académico más bajo que antes. = Today's student has lower academic achievements than before.
Mi perro tiene una inteligencia asombrosa. = My dog is surprisingly smart.
El niño demostró un conocimiento avanzado de... = The child demonstrated advanced knowledge of...

I don't know if these examples help or not. This is not something specific to semen, it's about how Spanish uses the articles more often than English.