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Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals. In Latin, a neuter plural ended in -a, and so these words today in Spanish are interpreted as feminine singulars and take singular verb forms; however, they do express some notion of a plural. [citation needed]
For example, a diminutive form of el coche 'car' is el cochecito 'baby carriage' while the diminutive form of el carro 'car' formed from the same suffix is el carrito 'shopping cart'. Some Spanish nouns can take a large number of affective suffixes, creating words with subtle differences in meaning or connotation.
Its a-is unstressed, but it usually takes el even when feminine. In addition, azúcar can be of both genders in Spanish (other words with double gender are sal (salt), mar (sea) and sartén (frying pan)): el azúcar refinada (el azúcar refinado and la azúcar refinada are also acceptable) Feminine el does not have the same origin as the ...
In Spanish, adjectives agree with what they refer to in terms of both plurality (singular/plural) and grammatical gender (masculine/feminine). For example, taza (cup) is feminine, so "the red cup" is la taza roja, but vaso (glass) is masculine, so "the red glass" is el vaso rojo.
the. MASC. SG abuelo grandfather el abuelo the.MASC.SG grandfather "the grandfather" Feminine la the. FEM. SG abuela grandmother la abuela the.FEM.SG grandmother "the grandmother" In "grammatical" gender, most words that end in -a and -d are marked with "feminine" articles. Example of grammatical gender in Spanish "Grammatical" gender Number Phrase Masculine Singular el the. MASC. SG plato ...
Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning: An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position—as in secretario general del partido comunista, "secretary general of the communist party"—usually held ...
A hendiadys is a phrase that contains two complementary words, and a gender-neutral hendiadys will include a feminine word and a masculine word, e.g. toutes et tous, citoyennes et citoyens. Within France, this gender-inclusive language has been met with some harsh resistance from the Académie Française and French conservatives .
Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages: Romance languages are moderately inflecting, i.e. there is a moderately complex system of affixes (primarily suffixes) that are attached to word roots to convey grammatical information such as number, gender, person, tense, etc. Verbs have much more inflection than nouns.