La libido!!

No no. Before you think this is an erotic post, think again. It's linguistic, you hopeless f#$ks!!

Ok, now in Spanish, (hehe, I am so much on the Spanish boat now that I don't hollaback anymore - I hola back) everything has sex. No, not the excesses showing now on Spartacus, you fools, the gender. Male or female. Every noun in Spanish is given a sex. It's either male or female. Every noun. EVEN THINGS!!!!

Now, if it is was a male object, you called it "el blah blah", and if it was a female object, you called it"la blah blah". Simple rule, right? Yes, it is. As soon as you find out whether the object is a male or female.

I mean, how do you distinguish, if a table, or a chair, or a piece of paper, or tequila, or anything-under-the-sun, is female or negative? I mean, I could look under the skirt, if there was indeed one. But if it wasn't there, what am I to do?

Or you could try to look at the physical shape for clues. My first attempt failed. I'd guessed the pen was all macho. I mean you just cant miss the phallic coincidence there, can you? Turns out I was wrong. The la pluma was one of my first mysteries in espanol. Well, if it was any consolation, the dirty lead pencil is el lapiz. Spanish might not deal too much with linguistic precision, but the previous example made me believe a little that it did believe in circumcision. Que Aso!!

Finally, my trainer, Marlon was kind enough (come se dice "kind" en espanol??) to finally explain a gender rule. If a noun ended in D, A, Z or -ion, it was female. So, pasta became la pasta. Concepcion became la concepcion. But like every rule, this one had exceptions too. Some words still ran foul of the rule. There was the el tequila (can't blame Spanish for it - it has to be male), el yoga, el sofa, el mapa, el lapiz, el avion. la etcetera. la etcetera. la etcetera.

Similarly there was a male gender rule also. If the noun ended in R, O, Ma or JE, it became a male. The stimulus of this blogpost actually arises from the second rule. If any word ending in O, is male. Then 'libido', the noun that it is, must be definitely male. If not unisex. (Alas, Spanish does not afford such equalities)

Wonder of wonders, the word breaks a rule. Spanish believes libido to be purely female. La libido. Wow. La Libido!!

In a purely masochist language as this, where both your parents are together called 'padres' (the first time I heard 'Como se llama tu padres', I thought Marlon was asking me about my 2 fathers) and siblings are together called 'hermanos', this qualifies to be called a titillating (pun unintended) surprise.