gender assignment

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>A Basque noun or adjective is most commonly used with the suffixed
>article <-a> attached, and hence Spanish-speakers would be more likely
>to hear <lana> rather than merely <lan> for `work'.  When they borrowed
>the word, they had to assign it a gender, and it's not surprising that
>the word was made feminine, since final <-a> is the usual feminine
>marker in Spanish.  But I can't guess why the word became plural in
>Spanish, or how it came to be restricted to `homework'.

'Homework' in Spanish is 'deberes', which explains the plural.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam