Why is there a masculine and feminine articles in spanish
I am very curious
1 Answer
Spanish evolved from Latin which has 3 genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In English the feminine gender is used for nouns that are female: Mother, daughter, girl, sister, aunt, etc, The masculine gender is used for nouns that are male: Father, son, boy, brother, uncle, etc. The neuter gender is used for all other nouns. This is quite different from the way the Latin language classified the gender of nouns. Although the same example words I just listed in English would be the same gender in Latin and are the same gender in Spanish, there were other words that were neuter for no apparent reason.
All of these Latin neuter nouns became either masculine of feminine as Spanish evolved on the Iberian peninsula alongside Basque and Arabic (whose influences are there on a much smaller level). Latin didn't have "articles", so as Spanish developed the weak demonstrative adjectives (words for this, that, these, those) were used with nouns and these evolved into el, la, los, and las. The Latin number for one unus, una, unum became the indefinite articles un, una, unos, unas. ,
As you can see I think you are intelligent enough to understand this so don't be offended by my correcting your English question title: You can say Why is there a masculine and a feminine article in Spanish (names of languages are proper nouns) or Why are there masculine and feminine articles in Spanish. The way you posted it is incorrect English,
