back to article Spanish struggle to control spelling of 'WhatsApp'

Spanish is an accommodating lingo, as the recent influx of tech and net-related Anglicisms attests, but these foreign invaders often prove challenging for Castillian orthography. The general line of attack is to adapt spelling in accordance with local custom where necessary, so while "chat", as in chatear (to chat), requires …

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  1. Wheaty73

    Gender of the internet???

    its a Spoon Steve, just a fucking spoon. Not a masculine spoon, or a feminine spoon, just a fucking spoon. /Izzard

    1. MacroRodent

      Re: Gender of the internet???

      There is no spoon.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gender of the internet???

        Only if you can see the fnord...

      2. Pedigree-Pete

        Re: Gender of the internet???

        Damn, you get there 1st +1.

    2. Stretch

      Re: Gender of the internet???

      Où est la plume de ma tante?

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Gender of the internet???

        Où est la plume de ma tante?

        Dans le jardin.

        The crimson cow is flying South.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not the best ever Friday article

    I've only ever heard it pronounced wasap and not being mobile phone obsessed thought it was to do with a beer advert of a few years ago.

    It seems most beer related words are feminine, my favourite being jarra and at the moment one that has preferably been pre-iced in a freezer.

    1. Kubla Cant

      Re: Not the best ever Friday article

      Maybe not, but how many include the phrase "metonymic gender assignment"?

    2. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Not the best ever Friday article

      It's usually pronounced "wasap" (except in Murcia apparently - "wasa") but it was the spelling I was interested in.

      Evidently the fact that this article failed to inspire you is down to a lack of jarras, either here or in your corner of Iberia. This must be rectified immediately.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not the best ever Friday article

        The situation will be rectified shortly.

        Re: Pronunciation. What about Andalucia? Possibly wa'ap

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: Not the best ever Friday article

          In Seville I believe it's been reduced to a barely audible aspiration.

  3. Getriebe

    wasap

    Was the way I heard it said first - before I had heard it in English. I back worked it to WhatsApp to my Spanish yoof and since then the ones I know say Whatsapp - they pretty well all speak English anyhow.

    The gender of Internet I shall submit to Salamanca for a ruling, back in a mo.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Indeed that's a complex matter

    Being a spaniard I can tell you I had a big laugh reading your article :)

    The fact that in spanish everything must have a gender so the syntax can be properly constructed creates some very funny situations. There are some words like "arma" (weapon) that has one gender in singular and another in plural ("el arma" is male, "las armas" is female), or can have both genders like with "mar" (sea) that can be male or female depending more on preference or intention of the speaker ("el mar" is male and used most of the time, "la mar" is female and used by people like sailors and poets that intent to express some kind of affection towards the sea).

    About words like Internet, depending on the country you will hear different genders (in Cuba seems to be female, and in Colombia seems to be male). In Spain most of the time articles are avoided when talking about Internet, as here Internet is more like a personal name (like a person's first name) and it is written without any article and with a capital letter at the beginning.

    Anyway, for tech stuff, english is king ;)

    P.D: Paella, sangria, olé :)))))

    1. Phil Endecott

      Re: Indeed that's a complex matter

      > There are some words like "arma" (weapon) that has one gender

      > in singular and another in plural ("el arma" is male, "las armas" is

      > female),

      Or agua. But no, it's always feminine; it is always "el agua fria", not "el agua frio". It is just el/la that changes, to avoid the awkward a-a. The equivalent in french is changing le or la to l' when the noun starts with a vowel.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Indeed that's a complex matter

        > The equivalent in french is changing le or la to l' when the noun starts with a vowel.

        Not quite. But it is analogous to the use of "mon" before a feminine noun starting with 'a' or non-aspirated 'h'. E.g., "ma copine", but "mon amie".

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Indeed that's a complex matter

      "El arma" is not male at all. Ex: El arma estaba cargada (the weapon was loaded). The use of the male article depends on the word "arma" being llana (grave). I'm sorry to be pedantic but spaniards really ought to learn their beautiful language better. An Italian living in Spain.

  5. Getriebe

    Universidad de Salamanca

    she say El Internet.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Universidad de Salamanca

      There you go then. Muy bien.

      1. DZ-Jay

        Re: Universidad de Salamanca

        In Puerto Rico, we say "la Internet." This comes by metonymic gender assignment, from "la inter-red," "net" being an anglisism of the proper Spanish word "red" (net).

        Surprising that La Real Academia chose differently. Now for the important stuff, ¿dónde está la cerveza?

        dZ.

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: Universidad de Salamanca

          In general, any word of uncertain gender (ie, a foreign import) will become masculine, unless there's good reason for it not to. Your Puerto Rican methodology is sound, although La Real Academia appears to have defaulted to the safe option.

          Hoy, ya que hace sol, la cerveza está en el frigorífico, pero muy pronto pasará al estómago.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Universidad de Salamanca

      > she say El Internet.

      Como si lo hubieran inventado ellos. :-/

      That said, the final consonant and the initial non-stressed vowel make it likely that, regardless of gender, the masculine article will be used.

      And if you think Spanish makes things complicated, try guessing the gender of a foreign word in a four-gender language with gender-dependent declension.

  6. Tiny Iota
    Headmaster

    Why translate?

    Isn’t it a proper noun? Why would it need translating? I know of course there are translations of names, (Londres is London for example) but this is an invented trademark.

    Genuine question, as I’m surprised there would be official advice on alternative spellings as companies normally protect their trademarks to the hilt.

    Is it just because of the difficulty of pronouncing it? Wouldn't they trademark an official re-name for Spanish speaking countries?

    1. John Crisp

      Re: Why translate?

      Most Spanish letters are pronounced as per their alphabet, and usually only have that one sound.

      W is pronounced (roughly) 'ubay doblay'

      I can't do it very well, but love getting my son to say www quickly...

      A 'Wh' doesn't really occur, (AFAIAAW) so for a Spaniard to pronounce it as written using their method it would be similar to 'whiskey' as above using 'gui'

      Where I live, as with many things they have inherited from the internet, they adopt the english pronunciation.

      Gender is a pain in the butt for us English speakers who are unaccustomed to it. I'm always getting my 'la' and 'el' mixed up. I also badly miss 'it' which they don't really have.

      Ah well. The suns shining and the beer is cold. What do I care :-) Salut !

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Why translate?

      It isn't translation but transcription or transliteration. Or how else do you think we got the word algebra?

  7. El Richard Thomas

    Espera, estoy whatsappeando...

    In my limited experience (mainly amongst friends in their 30s/40s) it's whatsapp and the derived verb whatsappear (hence the subject above, real example). In Guatemala recently there were tshirts all over the place saying "Guatzap?" but I think that was just a word play for the tshirt rather then being a generally used term. Shame really.

  8. captain veg Silver badge

    la red

    Surely Spanish "red" means "network", not "web"?

    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telaraña

    I once saw a Spanish colleague writing "figbag" in an email. Turned out he was asking for feedback.

    -A.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: la red

      "Red" also means net, as in fishing net, etc, so in the context of the internet, "la web" is the direct equivalent English "the (inter)net", with the gender coming from "la red".

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: la red

        I'm disappointed, Lester. Web != (Inter)net.

        -A.

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: la red

          Eh? http://www.evolutionoftheweb.com/?hl=es

          It's from World Wide Web, therefore the abbreviated "la web" is indeed the equivalent of "the net".

          It's also increasingly used to refer to websites, I gather, which looks to be the way the meaning is going.

          1. captain veg Silver badge

            Re: la red

            Indeed. And World Wide Web != internet.

            Most days I use a mail transfer agent to send and receive emails over the internet, without using a browser! Sometimes I move files around with and FTP program. I have been known to make internet phone calls. still without touching the web at all!

            -A.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: la red

          > I'm disappointed, Lester.

          Whether you're disappointed or not, he's right.

          > Web != (Inter)net.

          That's correct semantically, but not semiotically speaking, which is the context in which Haines was writing.

          In other words, for a Spanish speaker from Spain (not necessarily from Latin America), "la red" means "the web", not "the internet".

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is written

    gilipollas.

    Very simple really, when you know ;-)

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: It is written

      That's a guasap user, I believe.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It is written

        Well you could use it to describe a user of said software certainly, but also to describe the article itself

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: It is written

          I concur.

  10. fooooooooobar1

    In Murcia

    Here in Murcia we're not keen on unnecessary consonants. So we "wasa".

  11. Mark 85
    Pint

    Friday.... to hell with it.

    dos cervezas por favor

  12. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Interesting evolution

    If I understand correctly, in Spanish everything has a gender, but Spaniards avoid phrase constructions which would make them use a gender explicitly.

    Does that mean that Spaniards are starting to invent a gender-neutral form of expression ?

    That would be fascinating.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Interesting evolution

      It appears they are. They really do avoid assigning a gender to "internet". It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Interesting evolution

        > It appears they are. They really do avoid assigning a gender to "internet". It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

        Lo internet?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting evolution

      > If I understand correctly, in Spanish everything has a gender, but Spaniards avoid phrase constructions which would make them use a gender explicitly.

      No, not in the usual case. Only in very few specific cases when dealing with foreign words. In the case of "Internet", it is considered a proper noun and those in Spanish are not usually preceded by an article (indeed it is considered "incorrect" in the sense that it's non-prescriptive, albeit from an usage point of view it is an accepted regionalism and sometimes in familiar speech). So strictly, there is nothing too unusual in this sense.

      Foreign borrowings in all languages undergo a period of uncertainty concerning those grammatical characteristics that cannot be readily inferred from the source language. I have seen this as far back as 5,000 years ago (Ok, I wasn't there personally, but I have seen it in Akkadian writings where the gender of Sumerian words fluctuates depending on the scribe).

      > Does that mean that Spaniards are starting to invent a gender-neutral form of expression ?

      No. In Spanish, a gender-neutral form of expression in the mangled sense of the political correctness movement already exists, e.g., by using the passive voice. From a more academic point of view however, the masculine form is gender-neutral, same as in French (technically, it's the unmarked gender). If you are, however, referring to the development of a third gender, it's worth noting that as a Romance language, it still retains a few vestiges of the Latin neuter, e.g., "lo", "esto", even though Spanish itself never had a productive neuter.

      Interestingly, even though your English is impeccable, I noticed that you are indeed French, as your screen name suggests. :-)

  14. Alan Esworthy

    I bet you didn't provide this translation, Lester

    "Lo vi en internet" ("I saw it on the internet")

    No, the English would be "I saw it on internet." The article ("el" or "la") is specifically what the Spanish leaves out in order not to have to assign or recognize gender.

  15. LionelB Silver badge

    Roberto no es mi tío

    Mate of mine working in Spain used to have a laff dropping literal translations of English expressions on puzzled colleagues...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WhatsApp-ening

    NP, Cheech can handle this issue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlkWpl0HmTU

  17. Lamont Cranston
    WTF?

    If it's a brand name, and therefore a Proper Noun (or Proper Name),

    surely it'd be correctly written as "WhatsApp" in any country that uses the Latin alphabet, regardless of local pronunciation conventions?

    Nike and Sega have unusual spellings, by the conventions of British English, yet we've not disolved into a quivering, linguistic mess.

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