El poder del ahora

Question

Is this correct Spanish? I must be missing something here . . . as Heidita has said previously, it's hard to imagine a glaring error in the title of a book. First of all, is ahora even a noun in Spanish? and if it is, shouldn't it be feminine?

[url=http://www.amazon.com/Poder-del-Ahora-Realizacion-Espiritual/dp/157731185X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1'ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222120633&sr=8-1]http://www.amazon.com/Poder-del-Ahora-Realizacion-Espiritual/dp/157731185X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1'ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222120633&sr=8-1[/url]

I haven't read the book (and don't plan to), but I've seen the title twice when browsing through a section of Spanish books in the bookstore or the library and wondered about it. Is just this a bad translation of a title that's confusing even in English, or is something else going on here'

Answer 1

Maybe a better translation would have been, "El Poder del Presente", but I'm not entirely sure what they were trying to say with that title.

Answer 2

Strictly speaking, anything preceded by an article behaves like one, so you could say "el ahora". However, I'd probably have used "presente" instead, maybe (I haven't read the book). The original book was written in English, and it is called "The Power of Now".

Answer 3

I don't know if the title is gramaticaly correct; but it works, I mean it is easily understood and it atracts attention.

Answer 4

lazarus1907 said:

Strictly speaking, anything preceded by an article behaves like one, so you could say "el ahora". However, I'd probably have used "presente" instead, maybe (I haven't read the book). The original book was written in English, and it is called "The Power of Now".

To be honest, the English title doesn't clear anything up for me. Well, I guess if they were trying to translate an equivalent amount of mystery into the Spanish title, they succeeded. Thanks, everyone!

Answer 5

Nobody has answered one part of Natasha's question: Why is the article masculine (when the noun from which ahora is derived, hora, is feminine)?

Is there a rule that says that any word that is not a noun and does not have a gender will take "el" when nominalized (made into a noun)? Or is this a case where "del ahora" just sounds better than "de la ahora," as with words such as "el agua"'

Answer 6

James Santiago said:

Nobody has answered one part of Natasha's question: Why is the article masculine (when the noun from which ahora is derived, hora, is feminine)? Is there a rule that says that any word that is not a noun and does not have a gender will take "el" when nominalized (made into a noun)? Or is this a case where "del ahora" just sounds better than "de la ahora," as with words such as "el agua"?

"Ahora" is an adverb, and the nominalization is done to this adverb, regardless of the fact that etymologically comes from "hora", which happens to be feminine in modern Spanish. For some reason, adverbs and other invariable grammatical categories tend to be nominalized as masculine ones:

El sí
El ayer
El mañana
El cómo y el dónde
El comer y el beber

Right now I can't think of any case where you'd use the feminine instead, but if there is a rule, I am not aware of it; I'm just trying to induce a rule from several examples, so...

Answer 7

James Santiago said:

Nobody has answered one part of Natasha's question: Why is the article masculine (when the noun from which ahora is derived, hora, is feminine)? Is there a rule that says that any word that is not a noun and does not have a gender will take "el" when nominalized (made into a noun)? Or is this a case where "del ahora" just sounds better than "de la ahora," as with words such as "el agua"?

¡Lazarao, levántate y habla/escribe!

Answer 8

James: I've checked a few grammars, and I haven't found any explicit rule regarding this yet. Do you want me to keep looking'

Answer 9

lazarus1907 said:

James: I've checked a few grammars, and I haven't found any explicit rule regarding this yet. Do you want me to keep looking?

No, thank you, your empirical rule works for me.