Veep

[Laurence Horn]

On May 4, 2012, at 11:23 AM, Michael Newman wrote:

> There's a common misconception that probably has its origin in elementary Spanish classes that any noun ending in -a is feminine. In fact, -ista words are usually not inherently marked for gender. A man can be un comunista and a woman can be una comunista.

Or the sponsor of many of these -ista words in the recent history of neo-English:  Sandinista.  Not [+ fem], clearly.  But we have such short memories…

L

> There are also a lot of other words that are grammatically masculine but end in -a, such as programa.  There are fewer -o words that are feminine, the most famous being "la mano," but there are also clippings like la moto (cicleta), and a few others. But the -o is a better gender indicator than -a.
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> Michael Newman
> Associate Professor of Linguistics
> Queens College/CUNY
> michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
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> On May 4, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
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>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Veep
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> At 5/4/2012 08:47 AM, you wrote:
>>> "A photo op with the normals and normalistas." (The common folk; is
>>> "normalista" to be taken as a feminine form? Or as an enthusiast of
>>> normals?)
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