When Spanish Nouns Change Gender (except not at all)

Most feminine nouns in Spanish take the definite article "la". However, some instead take "el", the masculine definite article. Does this mean some Spanish nouns change gender? Read the second part of the title to find out!

[@GetOffMyLog]

Btw this is NOT to avoid double vowels. I mean, look at this phrase: 'va a hacer' - which has 3 consecutive 'a' vowels that are simple condensed into a single 'a' when spoken fast, or a long 'a' when spoken deliberately. The 'el agua' phenomenon is actually due to the previous form of the single feminine definite article, which was .... Ela. So, due to phonetics, over time, ela agua --> el agua while ela mujer ---> la mujer. So, no. It has nothing to do with separting vowels. Spanish doesn't mind that.

[@oiddio]

YES! I was waiting for him to actually say the actual reason why this phenomenon exists but he didn't. He provided what most language teachers (in my experience) erroneously attribute this phenomenon to ("because it doesn't sound good"), which just isn't a very convincing, consistent nor helpful theory.

[@ez3291]

Yes, I agree with you! It is puzzeling bc it is not consistent such as in French where articles and pronouns, where l' or 'mon' would be used solely for phonetic reasons.

[@LingoLizard]

Notes: There actually is ONE Spanish word that does 100% change gender, arte, which means “art”. In the singular, it not only takes “el” for “el arte”, but it inflects like a masculine noun, but in the plural, it is “las artes” and acts as a feminine noun. In Brazilian Portuguese, “a” and “à” are both pronounced /ɐ/, but in European Portuguese, “a” is also /ɐ/ but à is pronounced /a/. If you were to support me on patreon that would be hilarious www.patreon.com/LingoLizard/membership

[@virotutis]

the one word that can truly change gender is Azúcar, it can act as any gender for articles and for inflections, both in singular and plural form

[@rayelgatubelo]

"I'm literally Mexican" *shows a picture of himself eating a ground beef hard shell Glen Bell monstrosity instead of an actual Mexican taco*

[@aleografics311]

Es que los tacos originales no son tan fotogénicos 😂.

[@--julian_]

i think he is Mexican American

[@arthurmoran4951]

@@--julian_ tex-mex?

[@sachascharovsky1632]

portuguese is the gigachad of languages, that's the main lesson of this video

[@nobodyburgen4594]

*a*

[@calebsousa2754]

come learn portuguese, we have a á à â ã

[@AlicornHana]

Agreed

[@unvideomasmigentexd]

They don't have the best lyrics in the universe, the Ñ🤑

[@isaaceiffe7383]

​@@unvideomasmigentexd but we have NH👺

[@sqrt2295]

You should've mentioned the word ''arte'' which is normally masculine (el arte, el arte modernO) but in the plural becomes entirely feminine (las artes, las artes modernAs), and is literally the only Spanish word that has this quirk. I imagine that the word was originally fully feminine (it is that in Latin and most romance languages), then its singular form took ''el'' just like all other words starting with a stressed A, and then, since ''el arte'' was used much more frequently than ''las artes'', people confused the word ''arte'' for masculine.

[@David280GG]

"Agua" also is like that

[@sqrt2295]

@@David280GG Not really, since "agua" always takes feminine adjectives regardless of it being singular or plural.

[@paper2222]

holy shit, "arte" is bigender

[@David280GG]

@@paper2222 mie bolz

[@--julian_]

gender fluid

[@crazyoskie90]

Cries in iberian from seeing the brazilian flag represent my language

[@caseygreyson4178]

Chore.

[@ymndoseijin]

CHORA

[@Snewbew]

Chora +

[@PhantomKING113]

Te mando fuerzas desde España, a nosotros también nos pasa a veces •́⁠ ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠,⁠•̀

[@osasunaitor]

Iberian (spanish) brother here, the flag of the Portuguese language will always be the red+green Portugal flag for me

[@PhantomKING113]

Here in the north of Spain we actually change more things than just the definite article el→la, basically most determinants. This isn't "correct", but it doesn't matter much since it's often different to tell one version apart from the other. Edit 2: ig I'll give a little exposition about other romance languages in the Iberian peninsula: - Portuguese does have a lot of contractions, but they are mostly of the de+el kind (between particles). - Galician is a bit like Portuguese, and also a bit like Asturian, which will be discussed later. - Catalan/Valentian/Balearic is kinda like other Romance languages in that it does have contractions I think, but not a lot of them. Idk, I don't speak it. - Asturian (in all its varieties) and related languages/dialects (Leonese (lol), Cantabrian (also called Montañés), Extremaduran (ig that how you'd say it in English), the two intances of something called "Fala" (one in the border between Extremadura i think and Portugal and one between Asturias and Galicia (the ALLA calls this one Eo-Naviego)), and Mirandese (Miranda, Portugal)) are the ones I know best, as I am from Asturias (although I myself don't really speak Asturian much, that's mostly done in rural areas, but I do understand it): all of the following particles loose their last syllable (an apostrophe is written in its place) if the following words starts with a vowel (some only if it starts with "a"): pa (only "a") (for) que (that/which; that) me (me, to me) te (you, to you) se (himself, to himself) en→n' (in) la (only "a") (the (fem. s.)) de (of) el→l' (the (masc. s.)) (this one contracts fowards and backwards (Comió el su bocadillu.→Comió'l su bocadillu., Sintió el estruendu.→Sintió l'estruendu. (if it could retract fowards or backwards it goes foward, except for contractions between particles, which take priority)) As you can see, we don't get la going to el before feminine nouns starting with an a bc it just turns to l' regardless. We do, however, get other determinants, like demonstratives, changing gender, so Esta agua.→Esti agua., although this is likely a regional thing and may not apply to all of Asturias) Contractions between particles: con+el→col (with the) con+la→cola (with the) (here we do get la going to el before feminine nouns starting with stressed a, as in col alma, not cola alma) por el→pol (for the; through the) por la→pola … So... there's Asturian, at least as far as my understanding of it goes. [End of edit 2] P.S.: Also, horchata is a traditionally Valencian beverage, and, from the times I've been to Valencia, they really do have better stuff than what you get at supermarkets elsewhere in Spain, so I definitely recommend trying it out if you are even in Valencia, Spain. Edit: ok, after some googling, it seems what you drink in Mexico is probably closer to the original Roman stuff, seeing as how you use oats (Romans used barley), but here in Spain we use chufas, so really it's nothing like the one we make here. In other places they also use different grains to make horchata (rice, barley...) and it's starting to seem like the one with chufa is indeed a Valencian invention, but there were others called horchata already. Chufas are nice and sweet and give it a flavour that I doubt you would get out of grain, so... now I have to try the stuff made with barley too xd, and *you* have to try chufa horchata (writing Spanish words with English orthography is really confusing xd). Recommended supermarket brand: Chufi; recommended place to try out the artesanal stuff: Comunidad Valenciana.

[@desanipt]

In European Portuguese the feminine article "a" and the preposition "a" are pronounced with an unstressed /ɐ/. Meanwhile the contraction of both "à" (feminine "to the") is pronounced with a stressed /a/. In Brazilian Portuguese there's no difference, though

[@AndreLuis-hk2cg]

Que interessante, não sabia disso. Vc pode me dizer pq os verbos na primeira pessoa do pretérito perfeito são acentuados em Portugal? Também há diferença na pronúncia?

[@desanipt]

@@AndreLuis-hk2cg Sim, o pretérito (que é acentuado) é pronunciado com a aberto. O presente com a fechado (mesmo sendo a sílaba tónica). [Como alguém do norte de Portugal tenho a dizer que aqui não fazemos essa diferença, é tudo aberto xd. Mas a diferença entre o artigo e a crase fazemos também].

[@higorribeiro8318]

​@@desaniptque interessante! Pode me dar um exemplo?

[@nicomatf]

Otra cosa interesante es que a veces "o" (or) puede escribirse como "ó" en textos sobre matemáticas o ciencia, ya que "o" podría confundirse con una variable o algo por el estilo

French has a similar thing with possessive determiners. My, your and his/her/its (in french they agree with the possessed noun rather than the possesser) are usually mon, ton, son in the masculine and ma, ta, sa in the feminine, but change to the masculine form before a vowel. For example, you would get "ma sœur" for ''my sister" but "mon autre sœur" for "my other sister"

[@kklein]

gotta send this video to all the people in my comments sections innit. also flags are cool but have you considered using coats of arms ? 🤔🫣

[@sachascharovsky1632]

3:27 you wouldn't say "la conseguí" unless you're omitting the object. it'd be "conseguí el hacha roja" haven't finished the video yet, but i didn't wanna forget to comment by the end lol

[@juegosterrordesafiosypintu1446]

Well, someone already say this.

[@cmyk8964]

“El hacha roja, ¿la conseguí?”

[@junovzla]

Actually there are a few dialects (that I know of, some in Venezuela and most Chilean) that would say "la conseguí el hacha roja"

[@juegosterrordesafiosypintu1446]

@@junovzla I'm Venezuelan and I never heard someone say something like that. Although, I think you confuse the way of answer a question without saying the subject. For example: "¿Conseguiste la hacha roja?" "Sí, la conseguí" But in these cases we don't say "la conseguí el hacha roja"

[@PhantomKING113]

"La conseguí,", coma, "el hacha roja." sí sería correcto.

[@victoraguirre5545]

(Sorry for long text, I got inspired.) a) You still hear "la agua" (sounding more like "l'agua" /lagua/) and so on in several colloquial dialects of Spanish. It is discouraged, tho. b) Most "exceptions" and words whose gender you have to learn from memory really just have the inherited gender of Latin (Latin neutral words generally pass as masculine words to Spanish, consult rules of gender in Latin, it is not Spanish fault). Taking the in-video examples (and considering Spanish words generally derive from the accusative form of the Latin word) this applies to: manum > mano; caespedem > césped; lapicem > lápiz; clavem > llave (and also "clave"); mensem > mes. This because-so-was-the-gender-in-Latin "rule" forms the core of "wildcards" in Spanish vocabulary, several of them are very common words shared throughout Romance languages: "carne", "muerte", "suerte", "noche", "pez", "mar" (although poetically this could be also feminine, as is always in the French equivalent "mer", but this is a proverbial exception in French), etc. A little bunch are French words that took an "hispanicized" form but retained the French gender: crème > crema; coche (pronounced /kɔʃ/)> coche (pronounced /ˈkot͡ʃe/); paper > papel (this one is Catalan rather than French, but meh, the rule somewhat still applies). There are still exceptions to both of these, of course, "mappa" is feminine in Latin but "mapa" is masculine in Spanish, and viceversa with "sal". Curiously enough, Latin "florem" (flower) was masculine and "arborem" (tree) was feminine, but the contrary is true for most Romance descendants, including Spanish "flor" and "árbol". This "true exceptions" are a handful, but also tend to correspond between Romance languages (of course there are always exceptions: Portuguese "árvore" is feminine). True exceptions are also vocabulary adopted from other languages, specially indigenous languages and English. they tend to be more locally used and are not so many as the French or Latin ones, but there are some of general use and tend to be masculine: tomate, chocolate, huracán, clip, chat, etc. (Not ALL adopted vocabulary, of course, just the words that do not follow general Spanish gender rules.)

[@estrata1123]

I am a Spanish speaker and I have never listened La agua, non LatinAmerican country, neither Spain

[@victoraguirre5545]

@@estrata1123 No has puesto atención, supongo, ni oido nunca un niño hablar.

[@lofdan]

​@@victoraguirre5545la forma de un niño al hablar cuando está aprendiendo no se debe tomar como variante dialéctica.

[@pablovaz275]

Es increíble que tenga que venir un anglosajón a explicarme cosas curiosas sobre mi propio idioma. Great vid fam, keep it up 🧐☝️

[@calebsousa2754]

es mexicano

[@aleografics311]

No te viste el vídeo entero? 😅

[@nicomatf]

Che para los dos que le comentaron antes que yo, anglosajón se puede usar para gente que habla inglés

[@aleografics311]

@@nicomatf Pero de forma étnica o nativa no como segunda lengua 😰

[@nicomatf]

@@aleografics311 ehh pero lo he visto para gente que habla inglés y ya, supongo que angloparlante hubiera sido más preciso

[@rafaelsanchez580]

The reason why some feminine words begin with "El" is partly due to the fact that, for some reason, Spanish decided to not acquire shortened versions. For example: L'eau in French, L'aqua in Italian. Spanish should have evolved, if it followed the trend, into L'agua, L'alma and L'arte.

[@osasunaitor]

It's funny because (Castilian) Spanish is an exception among Romance languages in this case. Just take the languages spoken in Spain: Galician, Asturian/Leonese, Aragonese, Occitan (Aranese), Catalan/Valencian... all of them do the l' contraction, except Spanish.

[@itchy7879]

Horchata is love, horchata is life

[@aleografics311]

Tendré que probarla alguna vez en Valencia 🤔.

[@Nuriawall555]

Yo tendré que probar la de Méjico

[@arthurmoran4951]

@@aleografics311 ¿en españa hay aguas de horchata?

[@aleografics311]

@@arthurmoran4951 Se originó allí

[@silaba1x641]

​@@arthurmoran4951 la horchata es de España xd pero el agua de horchata no se si es lo mismo o solo es una variante del nombre

[@higorribeiro8318]

This video remind me when i ( a Brazilian) was taking Spanish classes. The teacher would always correct us about saying things like " la alma " or " la agua" and much more of those vowel to vowel situations, where in Portuguese we just ignore it and say " a água" and sounds totally fine 😅.

[@estrata1123]

We never say la agua in singular, it is el agua, and el alma.anyways theses are exception, very odds.

[@higorribeiro8318]

@@estrata1123 i know

[@katakana1]

Maybe you should make a separate video on languages' representation by flags! I'd like to see it

[@benvanzon3234]

7:43 Vexillology videos when?

[@modmaker7617]

Just use the flag of the country or ethnic group where the language originated.

[@LingoLizard]

Never again

[@isaacbruner65]

Sometimes the articles in Spanish can be changed for poetic reasons as well. There's an old Spanish poem/tongue twister that I learned "Debajo de la puente de Guadalajara, había un conejo debajo de la agua" and in this case the feminine noun "agua", which usually takes el for reasons described in this video, takes la instead. Also you may notice that in modern Spanish el puente is masculine but at the time this was written, feminine la puente was the preferred form.

[@osasunaitor]

2:34 I don't want to sound pedantic, but whereas "la alta" is correct when talking about a tall woman, _"el_ alta" is also correct when refering to the feminine noun "alta" (meaning medical discharge), which follows the rule of feminine nouns with initial stressed "a" taking the masculine article. E.g.: Me encuentro bien y he recibido *el alta* en el hospital = I'm feeling well so I was allowed discharge from hospital

[@ZeRo-bx7lp]

As a native spanish speaker, I've never noticed this until I saw this video. And I've definitely caught myself subconsciously changing the article depending on context. I've heard both "el agua" and "la agua (la'gua)" being said. I think it's a dialectal feature as some people definitely say some of these examples over others.

[@MinpikuWasTaken]

I really like your channel :D

[@estrata1123]

In the minute 3:24, In Spanish we omit LA in "La consegui el hacha rojo" so instead we say "consegui el hacha roja" that's how we build that sentence

[@donmarshal2070]

8:21 Marathi Language does have flag. In fact, there are so many flags for Marathi Language that you can easily differenciate their Area, Culture, Epoch of use & Usage Mentality just by Looking at the flag. It is only language which also uses Crest instead of flag to represent itself as a whole. You can even make video about it 😜 Edit:- After searching to give you example, I realised why you said it doesn't have flag. Even local people have hard time to find the flag online 😂. But if you search every era, you can find it easily 😅.

[@resourceress7]

Languages love exceptions. It's cool to learn about the group of words with stressed initial /a/ that take el. But one of your examples was an exception: la alta

[@PhantomKING113]

But... he literally said why that exception was an exception, and how it dollows a different pattern, where adjectives simply don't have this happen to them

[@KianSheik]

It's worth noting in spoken Brazilian Portuguese, the y and e switch does happen such as "oxe e é é" would be pronounced like "oshy y eh eh" so while it's not explicitly written, in pronunciation it can differ a lot. Another thing note in colloquial speech, say à is seen as more formal and rare. If I say let's go to the beach it would be "vamos à praia" but this feels weird to say casually so I would normally say "vamos na praia" utilizing the contraction "em + a" rather than "a + a" which does insert that consonanty feel to the sentence such makes it easier to say quickly. Português imo has seen less drastic linguistic reforms than Spanish and as a result etymology and formality are more preserved like in English at the cost of not accurately representing pronunciation or real life grammar patterns.

[@TheBluverde]

In Czech the noun _dítě_ (child) is neuter but its plural form _děti_ is feminine, so it really changes gender.

[@morriskaller3549]

"thank you to all ZERO of my patreons" Thats a nice way to put it

[@heyitstobias]

In spoken Québec French, the l in la and les can be dropped like in Portuguese to form 'a and 'es. There's also the prepositions s'a (sur la) and s'es (sur les) both meaning "on the". Also, dans les (in the) becomes dans 'es becomes dins. We like dropping consonants and e's (schwa) everywhere.

[@danijeljovic4971]

i already struggle enough to differentiate between ses, s'est, c'est and ces. now i gotta worry about s'es too lmao

[@tuluppampam]

I can only speak for italian, but in Italian the vowel from the articles (and other stuff) is dropped pretty much always before a vowel because no-one could be bothered to say it It can still be found in writing and is said at times, but usually such a vowel is useless because the information is conveyed by the rest of the word Also it's pretty hard to find d' in writing, while in speech it's very common

[@susanne5803]

German has some words changing grammatical gender with meaning: "der (masculinum) Weizen" - wheat "das (neutrum) Weizen" - a type of beer "das (neutrum) Korn" - grain "der (masculinum) Korn" - a type of high percentage alcohol beverage "der (masculinum) Berg" - the mountain "die (femininum) Berg" - "mountain" as a ship's name

[@jimmg4585]

Portuguese: O (masculino) cara (exception to the rule of nouns ending in "a" being feminine): the guy A (feminino) cara: the face

[@pierreabbat6157]

Then there's "app", which is, of course, feminine, but I think I've seen both articles used with it. Is a monosyllable stressed on its first syllable? Since "app" has , which is neither nor , after its last vowel, it's stressed on the last syllable, which is also the first syllable, so it should take "el". Similarly for "haz" (a variant of "faz"). But "a" (the name of the letter) has no consonant after its last vowel, so it's stressed on the nonexistent next-to-last syllable. So "el app, el haz, la a". Right?

[@PhantomKING113]

Nice xd, this is horrible, I love it. Note also the plural of "a" being "aes" (following no pattern at all, as even the plural of "o" is just "os"). The thing is both masculine and feminine words "haz" exist, so ig the influence from hearing "el haz" in the masculine ensured it would be the same for the feminine. Maybe monosyllables are just built different? La app is waaay more common than el app, so idk.

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

Hey, I like Japan's flag with its white background! Also, Brazil's flag rocks! (I like how the curved "ordem e progresso" band gives the blue circle a spherical look...)

[@protondium_8927]

HECK YEAH NEW UPLOAD!!!

[@protondium_8927]

Having finished the video, I gotta say, great job!!!!

[@SachaCubesLatino]

1:29 just 3 small comments from a native speaker of Spanish who's versed on the IPA (I'm an EFL teacher). 1.- I found it peculiar that you transcribed "agua" as ['agwa] in narrow transcription while pronouncing it as such (if you can't pronounce the Spanish allophone [ɣ] that's fine, but if you are using narrow transcription, you should've added it for clarity if for nothing else [el ˈaɣwa]). 2.- This one is about synaloepha and synizesis. Romance languages like Spanish lack glottal stops and really hate having contiguous vowels in a row (especially if they are the same one). As such, whenever we encounter cases like "¿Qué va a hacer Anita?" (What's Anita going to do?), the "...va a hacer..." bit, while still spelled with 3 "a" and undestood to belong to 3 words, if often blended or elited: /ke ba a a'ser/ > [ke β̞aˈser] Same with "la hache", "la abuela", "la adicción", etc. 3.- An interesting thing you could've mentioned is the diachronic origin of this phenomenon in Spanish from the Latin demonstratives "ille/illud" and "illa". Hypothetical "Illam" + "aquam" [ilːãˈakʷã] from Classical Latin would just become [eˈlːaɡwa] in Late Latin/proto-Romance and work its way from there to Spanish.

[@SachaCubesLatino]

For the linking, and if you are learning Spanish or other Romance language, I suggest watching "Ten minute Spanish" videos "Spanish has no glottal stop" parts 1 and 2

[@osasunaitor]

Nice explanation. The IPA should be a mandatory teaching at language courses

[@estrata1123]

El agua de mi baso Las aguas del caribe El alma de las personas Las almas de las personas

[@aetherxsn1591]

you should check out valencian. it seems almost liek a mix between spanish, french and italian in some parts, liek how "de" is shortened to "d'" when there's a vowel after it, or how with other articles, it does basically the same thing. an example would "la universidad", in valencian, is "l'universitat". that and because it just seems like a cool pick. also, nice spanish pronounciation :) ahora quiero beberme una horchata aaaaaaaa

[@dancieta]

When le llamas valenciano al catalan 💀

[@aetherxsn1591]

@@dancieta ay caca son casi iguales, eso y que vivó en valéncia

[@dancieta]

@@aetherxsn1591 creo que debi escribir el mensaje en ingles. Pasa que queda raro decir "valencian" en lugar de "catalan" por la misma razon que queda raro decir "castilian" en lugar de "spanish". En ambos casos son el mismo idioma.

[@aetherxsn1591]

@@dancieta weno, es verdad, aunque estoy mas acostumbrado a decir "valenciano" por haber vivido acá unos 6-7 años

[@dancieta]

@@aetherxsn1591 aqui (y supongo q en el resto de hispanoamerica tambien) les dices que Castellano y Español son la misma cosa y piensan que estas mal o peor. Lo se por experiencia xdd

[@Nostalgia-pc6hb]

Minute 6:00 correction in Portuguese "à alma" means "to the soul". Lettuce is ALFACE. À alface: to the lettuce. I know our À that means A preposition + A feminine article is weird. I think more than half of Brazilians can't use it properly.

[@galaxydeathskrill5607]

4:39 now I know I should have picked French This cleared up so many questions I had in 9th grade for what preposition meant what, wish this video existed back in 2020 (or I should have done more research but ohwell)

[@fonzworthbentley7455]

I thought I was fluent in Spanish but I never knew about "y" and "o" changing to "e" and "u"

[@no1fanofthepals]

In albanian, the word "ujë" (water) changes conjugation in the feminine. Different suffix for the definite article and everything. So do lots of gerunds ending in "-im"

[@noah-yp1jm]

same thing as portuguese happens in galician, which many (myself included) would consider to be part of portuguese itself. officially, they were the same language (galicianportuguese) until portugal got his independence and suddenly they were two different language bc yeah that totally happens. the thing with galician is that, due to centuaries of diglossia with spanish, it kinda got some of its features a little bit assimilated to spanish, and that includes ortography. the official spelling treats that same contraction (a + a = à) as "á" instead.

[@osasunaitor]

To put it in the simplest way, Galician nowadays is like a Spaniard trying to speak Portuguese. The grammar and vocabulary come undoubtedly from the ancient Galician-Portuguese roots, but the pronunciation is almost 100% Spanish (except the letter x and the nasal n). Still a beautiful language, and by far the catchiest accent I've ever known!

[@patja89]

While most of the time in varieties that tend to aspirate or omit the syllable ending s like in caribbean spanish or some varities of chilean spanish the s is maintaind when followed by a vowel, theres times, specially coloquially, where it is still omitted and so you end up with "el aguila" for singular but "la' aguila'" for plural

[@impendio]

Native spanish speaker, I had NEVER noticed this not even knew it happened. I would probably say “la hacha roja” tho, even if it was wrong, “el hacha roja” sounds wrong. You wouldn’t really often notice in speech because we link el/la all the time and drop the vowels consistently, “pásamel’agua” instead of “pásame el agua”. In writting you would care tho.

[@tchr9206]

Great video

[@SoicBR]

Average Spanish fan vs Average Portuguese enjoyer

[@DavidCowie2022]

German "the" says hello. Masculine nominative singular: der. Feminine nominative singular: die. Masculine nominative plural: die. Feminine dative singular: der.

[@norishark1089]

3:10 actually it's "*un* alma" the rule applies for indefinite articles as well

[@Pakanahymni]

This concept is called "euphony".

[@JDRL96]

A nu ma, no sabía que fueras mexicano :0 Also greetings just in case spanish is not your native language xD

[@theosib]

Romanian has nouns that are one gender in singular and the other in plural.

[@mohamedmendoza9503]

Saludos 🎉

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

I saw the title and was like “Ah he’s doing the K Klein thing where someone said Spanish words change gender like in Italian and Romanian and he had to correct them” lol

[@user-fl1dc9ju3g]

0:00 Spanish, *like many other languages* , has grammatical genders. Non-Indoeuropean-Afroasian languages : ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

[@hansmaulwurf9051]

Levels, levels.

[@CamerTheDragon]

Grammatical gender is one of the things that confuses me the most trying to learn a language yeah lol In terms of using the flags for particular regions/dialects, for RP most of England doesn't speak RP in particular and there's lots of different dialects. I'd say may as well just use the same flag as for English as a whole but note that it's RP in text in these cases, since using the flag of England in particular might imply to some ppl that all or most of England speaks in RP

[@nappeywappey]

Don't forget words that change meaning depending on their gender, like "la cometa" → "the kite" but "el cometa" → "the comet"

[@TheStickCollector]

Good

[@spaghettiking653]

Were you inspired by the usage notes section of Wiktionary to make this video? :)

[@rino09876]

THEY'RE TURNING THE DAMN NOUNS TRANS!

[@jacool2565]

What about "arte"? In the singular you say "EL arte abstractO", but in the plural "LAS artes escénicAs"

[@cuckoo61]

El arte is because arte starts with an a that carries the stress

[@ymndoseijin]

The gender is masculine in singular form el arte (“the art”) and feminine in plural form las artes (“the arts”).

[@fernit0505]

Some nouns have and ambiguous gender, and it may variate between regions or in archaic or literary contexts: el calor/la calor, el mar/la mar. Actually, he could have talked about these in the video.

[@SuperNair]

Nice

[@eclipsion136]

Alternative title: Why I use what flags for languages. (ohandlaaguabad)

[@vetrenyy]

learn russian, words don't change its gender there, u just can never be sure what gender out of 3 possible it can be. sure, most of the words ending in -a, just like in spanish, are feminine, but for example the most manly word, the "man" itself is [muˈɕːina]. another case when the word is probably feminine is when it ends in a 'soft consonant' (meaning it's palatalyzed) - like 'help' [ˈpɔməɕ], ˈovenˈ [pʲet͡ʃ], ˈbloodˈ [krɔvʲ] but then there is a horse - two variants, both ends in a soft consonant, but [ˈlɔʂədʲ] is feminine, and [kɔnʲ] is masculine, just because... well, to cofuse the americans, as one french man says, i guess 🤷

[@ptero]

You can 100% determine it's feminine gender if [the standard form of word] ends with "hissing" consonant (Ч, Ш, Щ, Ж) with -ь at the end (гореЧЬ, роскоШЬ, веЩЬ, роЖЬ), or with the /ost'/ (гордоСТЬ, жестокоСТЬ) You can also 100% determine it's masculine gender if it ends with hard consonant or -й (список_, Китай) And neuter gendered words can only end with -е, -ё, -о, -мя (полЕ, остриЁ, перО, вреМЯ) There's words in masculine gender that can end with -е (Кофе, Кюре, though that's considered archaic by many people), but there's only neutral gendered words that end with -о and -мя So, if the word ends with -а, -я, -ь, you can only learn that it's either Feminine or Masculine There's also rare miscellaneous endings like -ю, -э (авеню, алоэ), but they're so rare, and are actually not declensed, they're usually confused between Feminine and Neutral gender in casual conversation. Same goes for the ending -у and -и, but this time they're either Masculine or Neutral. Though they are mostly neutral. The rare exception is made for australian animals. So, if you want to ever talk about Кенгуру or Эму, refer to them with respect in masculine gender) (Also I wish I didn't scared anyone with russian, but like, rules of grammatical properties of words are ass and should be taught late. Though, they are worth learning, cause it will allow you to speak in very high stylish way)

[@primus6677]

Ahora entiendo eso

[@okapijohn4351]

Portuguese contracts a lot of words deemed unnecessary into just one word. "En la escuela" becomes "na (em + a) escola." "de lo perro" becomes "do (de + o) cão".

[@cmyk8964]

The time I saw a lot of vowels in a row in Portuguese was “O que é o ar?”

[@marcusaureliusf]

There's a joke about that in (Brazilian) Portuguese: how do you ask for silence using only vowels? Ó o auê aí ó! /ɔ u aˈwe aˈi ɔ/ (lit. look the noise there, look!)

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Spain:el,la Greece:to

[@kirilvelinov7774]

To kosmos(world) To nero(water)

[@anoldretiredelephant]

4:45 couple errors here about italian, 'gnocchi' is a plural word but you used the singular definite article 'lo', it should be 'lo gnocco' or 'gli gnocchi', also d' is uncommon in writing, also in Italian you also have 'ed' and 'ad' which are versions of 'e' and 'a' before some vowels.

[@ukrdima]

Dude, you videos are super informative, but may I suggest an improvement? It's hard to quickly find a feature you're talking about in all-white text. Bolding doesn't really help. Please consider adding some colors. I know some of the best color combinations with the purple background are already taken by Artifexian :D but still

[@antimatter_nvf]

Flag of Cyprus be crying from your words right now :( 🇨🇾🇨🇾🇨🇾

[@i.s.l.988]

I don't know what an article is. And even if I learn it, i'll forget in record time.

[@dancieta]

The words 'the", "a", "an" are articles...

[@scoliossis]

yay

[@sohopedeco]

Those phonetic rules of Spanish really are a pain in the ass. They are used so seldom that it's almost impossible for a foreigner to remember when to swap "la" for "el", "y" for "e" and "o" for "u" when speaking normaly. And I still can't wrap my head around the fact that "e hielo" is wrong without resorting to blunt memorization.

[@jacool2565]

In Spain, "y hielo" is actually accepted since we pronounce it as "yelo"!

[@thequantumcat184]

I'm Spanish and I (and most people I know) always forget to use "e" and "u", so don't worry about it

[@jacool2565]

@@thequantumcat184 True, it's less and less common in speaking. I just meant in formal speaking and in writing "y hielo" is allowed iirc

[@PhantomKING113]

1: you just broke my brain, this is trippy xd 2: I think it's because of the diptong, which makes it sound less bad, so the same applies for "hierba", "hiedra", and so on; I don't think there are any words that start with ia/io/iu/iei/ieu, so that's it, you only have to watch out for ie. Edit: also, not everyone forgets to use these in speaking; maybe we care about it more here in the north, but if one of my friends said "y incluso" twice I would start twitching in pain

[@jacool2565]

​@@PhantomKING113 In Spain hielo and hierba are pronounced exactly as if they were yelo or yerba. There is no vowel there, that's why we use "y". Also, there are some rare words with ia I think, but nothing enough to worry specially at a low-intermediate level (or even a high one for that matter)

[@habadababa31415]

I just realized that we say "el hacha" but "la hache"

[@javierlatorre480]

Every letter in the alphabet is feminine by default. I guess we don't say hache enough to apply the switched article rule.

[@jacool2565]

Probably bc all letters are femenine so it would be weird not to have it as la hache

[@habadababa31415]

@@jacool2565 just look at the response over yours, all letters are feminine

[@jacool2565]

@@habadababa31415 I know... that's what I said

[@habadababa31415]

@@jacool2565 but if all letters are feminine, by that logic, all words would have to be feminine

[@Zoomer_Z]

Nunca me imaginé que el español era tan complicado 😂😅

[@osasunaitor]

No lo es

[@parttimegorilla]

You also could have mentioned that French does the same with “ma” for example “mon amie” instead of “ma amie” although “amie” is clearly feminine

[@TheMasaoL]

For the African languages like Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu, and Xhosa might i recommend the Red Black Green striped Pan-African flag?

[@gotoastal]

Or don’t shoehorn flags in. Skip them entirely as it is the symbol for nations, _not_ languages.

[@TheMasaoL]

@@gotoastal Your ignorance is showing. The Pan-African flag does not represent one nation. It represents all African people and our heritage. Given how they describe their system it makes the most sense.

[@ThurusTaiKedillo]

7:29 If you feel compelled to disclose & justify the reasoning behind your iconography, but want to further distance yourself from judgement calls, you could scapegoat the Academies & say stuff like “Spanish flag because I’m explaining RAE rules” & “French flag because this is what l’Academie francaise prescribes”

[@dbass4973]

learning genders of the same words in different languages is gruesome as they never coincide. that's why lingua americana conquered the world i guess

[@barshimeth4452]

Can I ask, what's with el Mano and las Manos?

[@kjl3080]

It’s la mano

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Gender particles Spain,Argentina... Male(-o) Female(-a) Greece Male(-os) Female(-i)

[@resourceress7]

Ooooh, whose flag is the third one on the third row at 8:36? It's a square pixelated rainbow thing. Pretty.

[@tnogaming6903]

I think it's a flag of some natives around bolivia

[@Raimox112]

"la conseguí el hacha roja" is not grammatically correct, you either say "conseguí el hacha roja" or "la conseguí"

[@Nuriawall555]

Me sorprende un poco que tenéis horchata en Méjico, la mayoría de España no la tiene, aquí es una cosa puramente valenciana. Me pregunto cómo de distinto sabe. En las fotos que usas en el video veo que le ponéis hielo y no me decido si eso es estúpido o la mejor idea que nunca ha existido XD

[@johnneymc]

there is no grammatical gender in Chinese, nor conjugation, nor case, nor tense, such an easy language, wow

[@katakana1]

4:20 y changing to e, haha

[@fernit0505]

Açò és or, xata!

[@SirQuickenn]

yippee

[@anderji]

Ok I'm a nerd but your video has orthographical mistakes: months and languages are not capitalized in Spanish :P. We stick very stricktly to "proper nouns and start of the sentence".

[@gustavovillegas5909]

Aguas frescas supremacy, we Mexicans out here

[@tokisuno]

wait you're mexican? were you born and raised there?

[@df_degenerated7001]

Madness?

[@gallinacosmica221]

W es de wrande

[@marcusaureliusf]

*à* in Portuguese: literally (figuratively) no one knows how to use that in Brazil (and I'm not sure people in Europe get it right every time either). Once you learn it, it's infuriating that nobody else seems to get it right in real life. It's not that hard, but it looks like I learned that to pass my exams only. They know how to use "to the" in English but don't know how to use à in Portuguese (à means "to the" but most people think it means simply "to" as in French)

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Argentinian spanish is the same plus the "sh" sound and no fricative b,d,g

[@xqueenbee8214]

First time being this early XD

[@uselessfact3000]

4th

[@Zarugoza5969]

Haha I knew you are Mexican