txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Rick Mc Callister]

	You're right. Please excuse that brain fart. The "odd-ball"
feminine forms exist in Spanish and include la leche, la flor, la sangre
and a few others --I seem to remember seeing a list of about a dozen or so.
	I thought it was Posner who linked the treatment of neuters in
Romance to singular and plural forms. Does anyone where that idea came
from? And more importantly, if it's really valid?
	Besides having nuanced gendered doublets such as "la mar, el mar",
"el charco, la charca", Spanish has a few regional differences in terms of
gender with such words as "el calor, la calor", "el sarte/n, la sarte/n",
"el di/namo, la dinamo" (I've only seen and heard the feminine variety
without an accent). How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

>>[DGK]

>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

>But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
>pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701