La eterna pregunta: "¿Se escribe con H o sin H?"

  

En español, la letra H  es muda, es decir, no se pronuncia. La excepción son algunas palabras extranjeras, como hardware o hámster, donde se pronuncia como una J suave. El hecho de que la letra H sea muda en la mayoría de las ocasiones, se traduce en una dificultad considerable para los estudiantes de español, pero también para los hablantes nativos de la lengua. Por ello, es muy importante conocer las reglas para el uso de esta letra:

		EJEMPLOS:	EXCEPCIONES:
REGLA Nº1 Se escribe H en las palabras que comienzan por…	hum- + vocal	Humano, húmedo, humilde, humor	Umbela, umbilical, umbral, umbría
REGLA Nº2 Se escriben con H las interjecciones:	¡ah!
	¡bah!
	¡eh!
	¡oh!
	¡huy!
	¡hurra!
	¡hala!
REGLA Nº3 Se escriben con H las palabras que comienzan por…	herb-	herbolario	Olga, ermita, ermitaño
	herm-	hermano
	histo-	histórico
	holg-	holgado
	horm-	hormiga
	horr-	horror
	hosp-	hospital
	host-	hostal
REGLA Nº4 Se escriben con H las palabras que empiezan por las siguientes raíces de origen griego:	halo- (sal)	halógeno	Omóplato
	hecto- (cien)	hectárea
	helico- (espiral)	helicóptero
	helio- (sol)	heliocéntrico
	hema-, hemo-, hemat- (sangre)	hematoma
	hepat- (hígado)	hepático
	hepta- (siete)	heptágono
	hetero- (distinto)	heterogéneo
	hexa- (seis)	hexágono
	hidro- (agua)	hidrógeno
	hiper- (superioridad, exceso)	hipérbole
	hipo- (inferioridad, escasez)	hipopótamo
	hipo- (caballo)	hipódromo
	hol- (todo)	holografía
	homeo- (semejante)	homeopatía
	homo- (igual)	homosexual
REGLA Nº5 Se escribe H...	tras la secuencia inicial ex en las voces exhalar, exhausto, exhortar y exhumar, así como sus derivados
REGLA Nº6 Se escriben con H...	todas las formas de los verbos cuyo infinitivo se escriba con H	haber, habitar, hablar, hacer, hallar, hervir, hincar, honrar, humillar, hundir, hurtar
REGLA Nº7 Se escribe H delante de los diptongos…	/ue/ y sus derivados y compuestos	huevo	De huevo: ovario, óvulo, ovoide, ovíparo, oval De hueso: óseo, osamenta, osificar, osudo De hueco: oquedad De huérfano: orfanato, orfandad
	/ua/ y sus derivados y compuestos	marihuana
	/ui/ y sus derivados y compuestos	huir

Esperamos que esta entrada les haya resuelto muchas dudas, pero queremos apuntar que en una lengua no todo es teoría, por lo que hay palabras con H que no se rigen por ninguna regla. Nuestro consejo es que lean mucho, ya que es como mejor se aprende. Sabemos que la letra H puede ser sinónimo de pánico o pesadilla, pero… ¡todo se consigue!

Un saludo del equipo de Spanish Language Route.

The gender of Spanish nouns

The gender of Spanish nouns

First of all, it is useful to make a difference between animated nouns (people and animals: abogado-lawyer, ratón-mouse) and inanimate nouns (agua-water, piedra-stone). It is also important to know that grammatical gender of nouns (masculine, feminine) and their sex (male,female; although not all nouns posses it) is NOT the same. All nouns posses grammatical gender, but only animated nouns posses sex. Sometimes grammatical gender and sex coincide, but it is not always the case. That is why we are going to deepen into this matter.

As we can see in this video, grammatical gender of nouns plays an important role in Spanish. The video covers the relationship between gender and sex in animated nouns. It proposes three types of combinations. The first one uses the word ending to specify gender and sex (“-o” for masculine/male and “–a” for feminine/female: el gato/la gata). The second one uses exactly the same word to refer to masculine/male and feminine/female. However, the article changes to make the difference: el estudiante, la estudiante. The last one uses completely different words to refer to masculine/male and feminine/female.

But there are other animated nouns that don’t reflect any difference in form to refer to male and female; this is called “género invariable” (invariable gender). The mechanism used to express sex is the incorporation of other nouns like “macho” (male) and “hembra” (female). Example: el hipopótamo macho/el hipopótamo hembra (this would be incorrect: *la hipopótamo, *la hipopótama). Moreover, the agreement with other words, as adjectives, corresponds to grammatical gender and not to sex. Example, this would be correct: el hipopótamo hembra es precioso; but this incorrect: *el hipopótamo hembra es preciosa.

Besides, when we want to generalize with animated nouns (like “profesores”) and there are both sexes implicit in the noun, Spanish uses masculine gender; it does not only represent male but also female in Spanish.

Let’s talk now about inanimate nouns (remember: they don’t have sex!). There is no exact grammatical explanation for the grammatical gender of “buzón” (masculine) and “penalización” (feminine). But, still, there exist some rules that answer (more or less) our questions:

• Words ending in “–o” tend to be masculine, whereas words ending in “–a” tend to be feminine.
• Words ending in en –miento, -aje, -án, -én, -ín, -ón, -ún, -ar, -er, -or, -ate, -ete, -ote, -és, -miento, etc. tend to be masculine; whereas words ending in -ción, -sión, -zón, -dad, -ed, -ez, -eza, -ia, -ncia, -tud, etc. tend to be feminine.
• Proper nouns tend to posses the grammatical gender their hyperonyms have (the hyperonym of “Madrid, Valladolid y Sevilla” would be “ciudad”). Example: “Toledo está preciosa” is agreed in feminine because “ciudad” (city) is feminine in Spanish.

Another group of inanimate nouns is the one called ambiguos en cuanto al género (gender ambiguous nouns). These nouns can be used in masculine or feminine el/la azúcar, el/la mar, el/la maratón.

And finally, some inanimate nouns used in masculine or feminine have different meanings. Some examples of nouns changing in meaning if their word ending changes are: manzano (apple tree)/manzana (apple), bolso (bag)/bolsa (plastic bag); some examples of nouns changing in meaning if only changes the gender of the article that accompanies them are: el capital (money possessed)/la capital (capital of a country).

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CONOCER VS SABER

If you want to translate the verb "to know" into Spanish, you have two verbs to choose from: saber and conocer. Both mean “to know” in English but they are not interchangeable. Knowing which verb to use depends on the context.

Rules, Uses & Examples

Conocer

We use the verb "conocer" in the following situations:

• to express familiarity with a person, place, or object:

Conozco muy bien esta calle. (I know this street very well.)

¿Conoces a mi primo? (Do you know my cousin?)

Nos conocemos desde siempre. (We have known each other forever.)

Conoce la arquitectura francesa. (She is familiar with French arquitecture.)

Saber

We use the verb "saber" in the following situations:

• to express knowledge, or lack thereof, of information about something

No sé donde está. (I don't know where it is.)

Sabe la verdad. (He knows the truth.)

¿Sabes cuántas estrellas hay en el cielo? (Do you know how many stars are in the sky?)

Sé que no quieres ir a la fiesta. (I know that you don't want to go to the party.)

• to express knowledge, or lack thereof, of how to do something or perform a skill (saber + infinitive)

Sabe encontrar buenos precios. (He knows how find good prices.)

No sabe bailar bien. (He does not know how to dance well.)

Sé cocinar como un chef. (I know how to cook like a chef.)

No sabemos llegar a la casa de Pedro. (We don't know how to get to Pedro’s house.)

• to express that one knows, or doesn't know, something thoroughly

Sabe todas las reglas de ser y estar. (He knows all of the rules for ser and estar.)

Sé todo el alfabeto en español. (I know the whole alphabet in Spanish.)

via enforex.com

Ambiguous gender

If you look for "internet" in the Real Academia Española dictionary you will see:

1. amb. Red informática mundial, descentralizada, formada por la conexión directa entre computadoras mediante un protocolo especial de comunicación.

According to the Real Academia Española the above mentioned words are ambiguous, that is, they have an ambiguous gender. They can be masculine and feminine but their meaning will be exactly the same in both genders. 

In Spain the word "internet" is usually used with no article: "Internet es muy amplio" or with the masculine article "el": "el internet". 

There's no rule that let us recognize an ambiguous term but, in general, it is chosen depending on the register, context or dialect and personal preferences. For instance, in maritime context, "mar" is used following the feminine article (la mar). In our opinion, the best way to know if a term is ambiguous is by checking it out in the dictionary. Moreover, it is important to say that ambiguous names have not been always the same so they change over the years. "Calor" was registered in the 21 edition of Real Academia Española dictionary (1992) as an ambiguous name but now "la calor" (femenine) is considered vulgar and archaic so it is only possible the masculine gender. 

In the 22nd edition of Real Academia Española dictionary (2003) there are registered 105 terms that are considered ambiguous (amb.):  ábside, aguafuerte, alfoz, ánade, anatema, aneurisma, apóstrofe, armazón, arte, azúcar, bajante, blazer, canal, casete, cobaya, cochambre, delicatessen, doblez, dote, duermevela, enzima, esperma, fueraborda, herpe/herpes, hojaldre, interrogante, interviú, lavaplatos, lavavajillas, lente, linde, mar, margen, mimbre, monzón, mousse, orden, pastoral, pelambre, pringue, pro, psicoanálisis/sicoanálisis, radio, rara avis, reuma/reúma, teletipo, testuz, tilde, tizne, trípode, túrmix, vertiente, vodca/vodka...

Do you know any other ambiguous term?