Great Britain Not Serious About Spanish

Dulcinea del Toboso   Thursday, September 02, 2004, 22:54 GMT
This is what I've always heard:

say ---> [sei]
says ---> [sez]
said ---> [sed]

Damian,

Thanks for your response on the "Michael" thread. By the way, what are you studying? Are you taking any courses related to language?
Juan   Thursday, September 02, 2004, 23:11 GMT
Mi5 Mick sez:
<<No worries :)

No problemo as you would say!>>

Pleaze don’t imitate US American customz, Mi5 Mick. That version of Spanish is known as mock Spanish, a form which indirectly (if not deliberately) implies that Spanish is an overly simplistic language. Like Jordi has already mentioned to you, we would say sin “ningun problema/ no hay problema”. As you can see PROBLEM is of the FEMALE gender not MASCULINE, in Spanish :-) Yes, our phoneme system is compact and small and therefore you could argue it’s “simple”. But I doubt very much that that could be said about our grammar.
Ed   Thursday, September 02, 2004, 23:23 GMT
Jordi,

"As you can see PROBLEM is of the FEMALE gender not MASCULINE, in Spanish"


What do u mean? You say EL problema, not LA problema!
Mi5 Mick   Thursday, September 02, 2004, 23:45 GMT
"No problemo" is said all over the place, let alone America. I just figured it was Spanish or at least originated in it; it could be Italian. We also say it in French, and it's got nothing to do with mocking Spanish.

Les Sales Majestés - No Problemo :
http://www.paroles.net/chansons/33589.htm
Jordi   Friday, September 03, 2004, 06:18 GMT
The fact that a word ends in "a" doesn't necessarily always means it's categorically femenine. Some examples would be: "tema", "problema", "fonema" "lexema" (always "el"). Since these are "learned words" it could very well be due to their ancient Greek origin and how they are adapted in Spanish.
Mi5 Mick, these kinds of pseudo-Spanish things like "mañana" (meaning "I'll do it/come back tomorrow" unheard of, in this sense, in Spanish) and "no problema" definitely have their origin in the presumption that the Spanish-speaking people are somewhat lazy and simple. They have become household expressions in English and many people don't always relate them, any longer, to that but Juan is right. "No problemo" doesn't belong to any known Romance language it's just fake Spanish and I've also heard it in French people. The fact is that it must have its origin in English where "no problem" would be correct since no Romance language would ever use "no" in that case. Furthermore the pronunciation of final "a" in Spanish by heavily monolingual English-speaking people often takes a strange turn.
Sans aucun problème (French), sin ningún problema (Spanish) or sense cap problema (Catalan),
nic   Friday, September 03, 2004, 08:13 GMT
sans problème, pas de problème
Mi5 Mick   Friday, September 03, 2004, 08:20 GMT
In that sense of being thanked, it's more like "de rien", "y'a pas de quoi".

I'm sure there are plenty of fake English expressions in other languages too, eg. "it's finger in the nose" doesn't mean anything in English but in French it means "child's play".

"No problemo" sounds like "no problem", and I don't perceive many English-speaking suspecting its quasi-Spanish origin (unless they lived in the US near the southern border or some other similar situation), let alone the malice at that. The philosophy behind it, here at least, is related to playful language with the use of "oh", eg. righty-o, right-o, hi ho, cheery-o (now cheerio).
Mi5 Mick   Friday, September 03, 2004, 08:22 GMT
*English-speaking -> English speakers
nic   Friday, September 03, 2004, 10:02 GMT
I just wanted to illustrate what Jordi said about the use of no and problemo in the french meaning, non problème does not exist.
Damian   Friday, September 03, 2004, 15:44 GMT
<<By the way, what are you studying? Are you taking any courses related to language? >>

Hi Dulcinea del Toboso:

Hope the "Michael" info was clear. I graduated earlier this summer from Leeds uni in England with a 2:1 in English Literature with Theatre Studies. It was hard work but oh! so enjoyable. I cherish the English language which is why I come into this forum.

As a European I now intend to improve my schoolboy/holiday time French with the ambition being to become fluent, and study Spanish as a priority, too, as that is such a worldwide language. Then delve into Catalan? I am sure I can rely on advice in this forum.

At the present time I am taking it easy comparatively speaking while working as a supermarket checkout operator; enjoying that as well but from a different perspective in that it is the first time I have dealt with the public! Believe me that is a challenge... fun though.
Juan   Saturday, September 04, 2004, 22:51 GMT
Jodi sez:
<<The fact that a word ends in "a" doesn't necessarily always means it's categorically femenine. Some examples would be: "tema", "problema", "fonema" "lexema" (always "el"). Since these are "learned words" it could very well be due to their ancient Greek origin and how they are adapted in Spanish. >>

Really!? I fell asleep throuhg most of my "Spanish" class, which kinda explains :-) LOL! I have never been a big of grammar/language related stuff. I find it so tedious and boring. I just learn enough to get by. Science and finance is much more interesting.
Juan   Saturday, September 04, 2004, 22:53 GMT
Yeah, I should have known

"El probleman" insetead of "La problema". El agua instead of La agua and so on.

I frequently forget about those little details. Must be more careful I guess. I'm cut out to be a language teacher that's for damn sure.
Juan   Saturday, September 04, 2004, 23:32 GMT
I meant to say I'm NOT CUT OUT ;-)
Easterner   Monday, September 06, 2004, 11:13 GMT
Jordi,

<<The fact that a word ends in "a" doesn't necessarily always means it's categorically feminine. Some examples would be: "tema", "problema", "fonema" "lexema" (always "el"). Since these are "learned words" it could very well be due to their ancient Greek origin and how they are adapted in Spanish. >>

Actually you are quite right about this. The words ending in "-ema" are in neuter in Ancient Greek, so the fact they have the masculine article in Spanish is an appreciation of this fact, since there is no neutral gender in modern Romance languages. It is as I know much the same in French and Italian, too, and also in German (Thema is also neuter in German, though "tema" is feminine and "problem,", "fonem" and the like are masculine in Serbian, which does have neuter). As I have been interested in how the gender of loanwords is preserved in a language, I see some languages give credit to the original gender at the cost of producing "irregular" forms, and some others (like Slavic ones) incorporate them into their own "regular" grammatical gender system in different ways. One practical use of knowing this is to be aware of the gender of words with a particular ending in a given language.

But this was a deviation from the topic, I just couldn't help sharing this discovery. So I guess I am irreparable. :-) I wish you a nice discussion of the main topic.
Jordi   Monday, September 06, 2004, 12:35 GMT
I really appreciate your contribution although I obviously knew why Catalan and Spanish have those words in masculine. I'll tell you another small secret about Spanish genders. When a word starts with "a" "o even a silent "h") Spanish turns the feminine article into masculine. Why? Simply because of phonetics. We say "el agua" and "el hambre" (water and hunger) although in plural it's "las aguas" and "las hambres". Both words recover their feminine gender in plural. It would be awkward to pronounce "la agua" and "la hambre" since Spanish has no apostrophation system and there are two "a", one after the other.What's more we say "el agua estaba fría" y "el hambre era mucha" (Water was cold and there was a lot of hunger.) As you can see, both "fria" and "mucha" take a feminine gender (not "frío" and "mucho") although we must write a masculine "el" that doesn't make those nouns masculine.
I hope you enjoyed that lesson of Spanish.