Winter's day

[irmamar]

En la formación de una lengua intervienen varios factores, entre ellos: el sustrato, el contacto con otras lenguas y, evidentemente, el dialecto hablado por los conquistadores (en nuestro caso).

De todos modos, en español se dice "día de" invierno, verano, primavera u otoño. Por eso pregunté. Tal vez haya alguna razón escondida e ignorada.

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by pjt33

Roughly speaking nouns which are masculine and feminine in Latin (many of which ended in -a if feminine and in -us if masculine; -us has become -o in Spanish) have retained their gender, but nouns which were neuter are pretty arbitrary. Some of them have even changed over the history of Spanish (el mar used to be la mar, and still is in Ecuador: nice and logical )


o -> ue, e -> ie, e -> i, etc.

E.g. molar (adj) with cognate noun muela, from Latin molaris. However, had the Latin been mōlaris it would be mola in Spanish: the vowel wouldn't change when it got the stress. In essence, Latin short and long vowels (which sounded different and were written differently in Latin) are pronounced and spelt the same in Spanish but behave differently with stress.

Yes - I see what you mean by the arbitrariness of the neuter and didn't realize that there were some that have migrated to the other gender (!!!), but I have still found that knowing/remembering which gender a noun is isn't my real problem. MY real problem is remembering to match the articles, modifiers TO the gender/number of the noun.

And thank you for explaining what you meant by the vowel changes. I agree that it's confusing. Quite a bit of memorizing to do, even though I'm trying to learn without memorizing much, but using a lot. I have also found that, for the most part, the spelling changes in the conjugations have seemed to have a certain sense to them..............

[irmamar]

El proceso de formación del español es un tema de estudio (gramática histórica). Yo lo tuve que estudiar hace años. Si profundizas en él verás que todo es más lógico de lo que parece. No puedo poner aquí todos los cambios y los motivos que existen. Pero te puedo citar algún ejemplo:

- Cambios fonéticos:

* Por desaparición de sonidos (por asimilación: cor(i)acea > coraza; por disimilación: vicinu > vecino), por aféresis (ad horam > ahora), por síncopa (fabulare > hablar), apócope (veritate > verdad).

* Cambios de lugar de sonidos: por eufonía, por evocación de otra palabras o por analogías personales. Estos cambios explican usos vulgares.

* Por adición de sonidos: prótesis, epéntesis y paragogue (betula > abedul, stella > estrella, arenc > arenque).

* Por analogía con otras palabras.

Tambien hay: cambios morfosintácticos (asimilación neutros latinos a nombres masculinos o femeninos según su terminación), mezcla de procesos evolutivos (formándose "dobletes" entre la forma evolucionada y la más antigua), etc.

Sigo creyendo que mi idioma es lógico.
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[Perikles]

Originally Posted by irmamar

Sigo creyendo que mi idioma es lógico.
-

Is there any particular reason for the 'e' in front of words starting with a double consonant starting with 's' ? (stella > estrella)

It sounds so peculiar to hear foreign names spoken with the 'e', such as eSteven eSpielberg.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Perikles: There is.
No consonant by itself makes a syllable in Spanish. They always need a vowel.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

@Perikles: There is.
No consonant by itself makes a syllable in Spanish. They always need a vowel.

I don't understand. The word Steven in English has 2 syllables, but when spoken by somebody Spanish, it always has 3. Why? (I mean I know why, because you can't have a word in Spanish starting 'sp') but I don't understand your explanation.

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by Perikles

I don't understand. The word Steven in English has 2 syllables, but when spoken by somebody Spanish, it always has 3. Why? (I mean I know why, because you can't have a word in Spanish starting 'sp') but I don't understand your explanation.

Spanish doesn't allow "st" or "sp" together in one syllable. Thus they need to be broken apart into two syllables. If "st" is at the beginning of a word, then you're left with "s" as a syllable, which is also not allowed (you need at least one vowel in every syllable), thus the need for the "e" at the beginning.

English: ste - ven
Spanish: s - te - ven (needs the "e" at the beginning)

[irmamar]

Yes, you say school, we say escuela. You say Stephen, we say Esteban. You say Spain, we say España. Your construction "s + consonant" is quite difficult to say for Spanish speakers because we have a similar construction with an "e" before the "s" (followed by a consonant), and that form a syllable to us. Spain has a syllable for you, we have three: Es-pa-ña.

[Perikles]

Thanks everyone, I do understand, I was just wondering why, historically, that 'st' and 'sp' could not be included in the same syllable. If there is no explanation, that's fine.

[irmamar]

I think we told you the explanation That is because the rules to form the syllables are different. When there are two consonants between two vowels, the first consonant is joined to the first vowel; the second, to the second vowel. "Estudiar": es -tu-diar; pentagrama: pen-ta-gra-ma. "Study" doesn't have an "e" before the "s", but por analogía (), we follow the former rule and create an "e" before the "s",since the sounds "st", "sp", etc. don't exist in Spanish at the beginning of a word, but "est", "esp", etc. do.



Edit: ah, you meant historically. Esas cosas las dejo para los eruditos en la materia