Difference between revisions of "Faux Genders"

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| style="font-weight: bold;" | pain
 
| style="font-weight: bold;" | pain
 
| la douleur || el dolor || a dor
 
| la douleur || el dolor || a dor
|}
+
|-
 
+
| style="font-weight: bold;" | tomato
Back to [[Linguistic Musings]]
+
| la tomate || el tomate || o tomate
 +
|

Revision as of 20:29, 6 October 2004

Spanish and French, both being Romance languages, have a gender attribute to their nouns. Also, being related, many words have the same origin. These are called cognates. In French, cognates that don't have the same meaning as their source are called faux amis. Having studied French before Spanish, and not ever having been good at remembering what gender a given noun was in French, I found it convenient to rely on Spanish when I needed a noun's gender, since remembering a noun's gender in Spanish is as simple as learning only a few rules and a handful of exceptions. However, it turns out that not all French-Spanish cognates have the same gender, though probably well over 90% do. Here's a small compilation of exceptions I've been able to collect.

Faux Genders
English French Spanish Portuguese Latin
colour la couleur el color a cor
end la fin el fin o fim
inch le pouce la pulgada
ice la glace el hielo
minute la minute el minuto o minuto
blood le sang la sangre o sangue
sea la mer el mar o mar
milk le lait la leche o leite
flower la fleur la flor a flor flos (masc)
salt le sel la sal o sal
pain la douleur el dolor a dor
tomato la tomate el tomate o tomate