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Sevilla, miarma, how beautiful you are


All my roommates just asking me, sooner or later, the doubts of his duties in Castilian.

In this sense, there are two levels: those who still have trouble differentiating between the verbs ser and estar and therefore used indiscriminately and, on the other hand, those who have overcome this difficulty and often ask questions more difficult.

a couple of weeks ago, an Englishman, while preparing his tea at four, I asked a question to me was obvious at first:

-Emilio, Do you say or Sevilla Sevilla is beautiful is beautiful?
-Sevilla is beautiful.
"So the cities are all female?
"Well I think so, yes. Or not. Jaén not. Jaén is male "I said, recalling the famous poem by Manuel Machado says" silver Jaén.
- And Madrid?
-Madrid ... Madrid is female. For example, it says "Madrid was full of people." And also ... ... Wait, it says "The Madrid of the forties," "The Mother of Forties" sounds weird. Madrid must be ambiguous. However, Sevilla is distinctly feminine, it says "LA Sevilla today" and not "THE Sevilla today, which would refer to the football team.

It got more complicated when I discovered that "The Sevilla of today" would not sound too unusual in that it made my ear. Now I have is so clear that Sevilla female, but I would say yes, at least for all those tiles in the center reading " Sevilla, miarma, how beautiful you are ".

grammatical gender This problem left me with the fly behind the ear, until I decided check my grammar of the RAE said something about the subject.

Indeed, in section 2.5.1b, read the following:

" In the case of name own cities and countries tend to be used as female ones that end in unstressed-a (Colombia, Córdoba). When in-a tonic, the names are masculine countries (Panama, Canada), but those cities tend to be female (Bogota). The finishes in another vowel or a consonant are generally in the masculine (Toledo, Buenos Aires), although often both genders are possible. Both genders are possible when combined with the quantifier all, but rather the use of Madrid as masculine. "

So, I concluded that the gender of the cities is more of a trend, with the final choice of the speaker using the male or female. No But still I ask whether there are subjective dyes that make us choose one gender or another depending on the context in which to unfold the city.

Photo: From the roof of Manu and Dew.