This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/19/el-brexit-la-brexit-eu-divided-over-gender-of-uk-departure
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Europe's first ruling on Brexit: it's masculine, unless you're Italian | Europe's first ruling on Brexit: it's masculine, unless you're Italian |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| The EU may be agreed on its response to Britain’s vote to leave – but on one key question it remains divided: is Brexit masculine or feminine? | The EU may be agreed on its response to Britain’s vote to leave – but on one key question it remains divided: is Brexit masculine or feminine? |
| In French, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is known as le Brexit, either – although the Académie Française has yet to rule on the question – because new words in French are almost invariably masculine, or because nouns ending in “t” end (with a few exceptions: la nuit, la forêt, la plupart) that way. | |
| Germany, also, appears to have pretty much decided that der Brexit is a male thing. This might seem odd since several German nouns ending in “it” (das Fazit, meaning conclusion, das Dynamit, dynamite, and das Zenit, zenith) are neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter. | Germany, also, appears to have pretty much decided that der Brexit is a male thing. This might seem odd since several German nouns ending in “it” (das Fazit, meaning conclusion, das Dynamit, dynamite, and das Zenit, zenith) are neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter. |
| But as any German learner knows, what makes a German noun feminine, masculine or neuter is somewhat less clear than in Latin languages. Der Brexit may be inspired – perhaps unwisely – by the equally masculine der Profit, or more likely by the fact that the German word for exit, der Austritt, is masculine. | But as any German learner knows, what makes a German noun feminine, masculine or neuter is somewhat less clear than in Latin languages. Der Brexit may be inspired – perhaps unwisely – by the equally masculine der Profit, or more likely by the fact that the German word for exit, der Austritt, is masculine. |
| Spain, too, has plumped for el Brexit, because most English loan words become masculine by default in Spanish. That’s because they rarely end in “o” (generally masculine) or “a” (generally feminine) like most Spanish nouns, and given the choice between male and female, Spain, being a Latin country, opts for male. | Spain, too, has plumped for el Brexit, because most English loan words become masculine by default in Spanish. That’s because they rarely end in “o” (generally masculine) or “a” (generally feminine) like most Spanish nouns, and given the choice between male and female, Spain, being a Latin country, opts for male. |
| Italy, for the time being at least, is resisting the trend – and its language police, the Academia della Crusca, has published a fabulously lengthy explanation as to why. Debating whether Italians should say plain Brexit (without a preceding article), il Brexit or la Brexit, the academy finds firmly in favour of the last. | Italy, for the time being at least, is resisting the trend – and its language police, the Academia della Crusca, has published a fabulously lengthy explanation as to why. Debating whether Italians should say plain Brexit (without a preceding article), il Brexit or la Brexit, the academy finds firmly in favour of the last. |
| “It seems preferable to make Brexit feminine,” it said, “since etymologically, the component exit has a corresponding Italian noun, ‘uscita’”, which is feminine. Moreover, it adds, use of a preceding article would be in line with other loan words describing “real or hypothetical events ... indicating complex scenarios”, such as la perestrojka and il global warming. | “It seems preferable to make Brexit feminine,” it said, “since etymologically, the component exit has a corresponding Italian noun, ‘uscita’”, which is feminine. Moreover, it adds, use of a preceding article would be in line with other loan words describing “real or hypothetical events ... indicating complex scenarios”, such as la perestrojka and il global warming. |
| As with most things in Europe, France and Germany, once agreed, are likely to end up on the winning side in the Brexit gender war, as the former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane observed in a tweet. Britain, for its part, will doubtless hope for more disunity once the real Brexit battle starts. | As with most things in Europe, France and Germany, once agreed, are likely to end up on the winning side in the Brexit gender war, as the former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane observed in a tweet. Britain, for its part, will doubtless hope for more disunity once the real Brexit battle starts. |
| Breaking. France and Germany have decided Brexit is masculine. Le Brexit. Der Brexit. | Breaking. France and Germany have decided Brexit is masculine. Le Brexit. Der Brexit. |