Saying "the Argentina"? The battle over articles with country names
The 1931 RAE grammar endorsed "el Perú" and "el Brasil". Today it sounds provincial. Why did Spanish lose the article with country names?
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The fashion of saying "the Spain": statesmanlike or provincial?
Picture the scene: someone at a dinner table says they are from "the Argentina". The listener takes a second to decide whether they are facing a language scholar or a character out of Larra. Putting an article in front of a country name today has the same effect as a top hat on the underground: either it impresses, or it makes you cringe.
The habit has had its defenders, and there are arguments for it. Some proposed reviving the article for countries and regions even in cases where it was never used: "the Spain", "the Italy", "the Cantabria". And it is not a modern whim. Italian does it naturally —"la Spagna", "la Francia"—, so do Catalan and, in part, Portuguese. The thesis of an imported Gallicism does not hold up: English, so heavily influenced by French, does not do it.
The baggage of eighteenth-century French influence
The campaign to place the article before country names came from the Francophile circles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a direct copy of French "la France", "le Pérou". That fashion never fully caught on, but it left its mark on grammars: the RAE's 1931 grammar listed uses such as "el Perú" or "el Brasil" as standard.
Drawing-room grandiloquence
Today the academic rule is to omit the article except in structural cases —"Estados Unidos", "El Salvador"— or where tradition is firmly established. Anything else sounds dated or, worse, provincial: like introducing a friend by saying "I'm meeting the John". The language has moved on; Golden Age prose, which used "el Perú" without a second thought, stayed in the books. The striking fact: the 1931 RAE grammar backed those grandiloquent writers. The rule changed before people's ears did.
Picture the scene: someone at a dinner table says they are from "the Argentina". The listener takes a second to decide whether they are facing a language scholar or a character out of Larra. Putting an article in front of a country name today has the same effect as a top hat on the underground: either it impresses, or it makes you cringe.
The habit has had its defenders, and there are arguments for it. Some proposed reviving the article for countries and regions even in cases where it was never used: "the Spain", "the Italy", "the Cantabria". And it is not a modern whim. Italian does it naturally —"la Spagna", "la Francia"—, so do Catalan and, in part, Portuguese. The thesis of an imported Gallicism does not hold up: English, so heavily influenced by French, does not do it.
The baggage of eighteenth-century French influence
The campaign to place the article before country names came from the Francophile circles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a direct copy of French "la France", "le Pérou". That fashion never fully caught on, but it left its mark on grammars: the RAE's 1931 grammar listed uses such as "el Perú" or "el Brasil" as standard.
Drawing-room grandiloquence
Today the academic rule is to omit the article except in structural cases —"Estados Unidos", "El Salvador"— or where tradition is firmly established. Anything else sounds dated or, worse, provincial: like introducing a friend by saying "I'm meeting the John". The language has moved on; Golden Age prose, which used "el Perú" without a second thought, stayed in the books. The striking fact: the 1931 RAE grammar backed those grandiloquent writers. The rule changed before people's ears did.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (29 replies).
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