Quote:
Originally Posted by Falcao
The following is  (more or less)
Most Spanish nouns have gender. Thus, you can translate "friend" as "amigo" if it is a male friend or as "amiga" if it is a female friend. Plural nouns are the same, so you can talk about "amigos" or "amigas". But there is a catch. If among the group of female friends one has a male friend, then the plural is "amigos" like if all the friends were males.
Moreover, in Spanish there is a hint of machismo. We don't have a neuter term like "siblings", we talk about "brothers", even if there is one brother and five sisters. We don't have a term like "children", we say "sons". We don't have a term like "parents", we say "fathers". And so on. |
We have this, but to a much lesser degree. We don't have the "sibling" word either, but simply say brothers and sisters. But we do have the "parent" and "child" neutrer word. But when the gender is unknown, it mostly is simply "he".
Talking about genders in language, it's always funny when there's a difference in gender for objects and there's a translation (especially on TV or movies). In English, cars and boats are the female gender (that boat, she...). But if something like that is spoken on TV and the subtitles come up, it'll be translated "that boat, he...".